


dream a dream (and what you see will be)

by Mizzy



Category: Die unendliche Geschichte | Neverending Story - Michael Ende, Inception (2010), NeverEnding Story (1984)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Inception Big Bang Challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-02
Updated: 2012-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-30 12:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 59,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizzy/pseuds/Mizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames has always said Arthur has no imagination and should dream a little bigger. The problem is, Arthur's dreams might be the most dangerous place to be on the planet. And when their latest job forces them to recreate Fantasia, and Arthur's secret past unravels alongside it, Cobb's team might be about to find the answer to the <i>Neverending Story</i>...</p>
            </blockquote>





	dream a dream (and what you see will be)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to to rufflefeather, lmx_v3point3, Aja, kiyala and darlinglileve, all who have contributed to this fic in amazing ways. I love you all. ^^;;
> 
> In this universe  _The Neverending Story_  was written by Bastian Bux. In reality, it was written by Michael Ende. It belongs to me in neither universe! I have been reliably informed you do not have to have read/seen the Neverending Story to understand this fic. :)
> 
>  **Link to art master post:** [here](http://darlinglileve.livejournal.com/6351.html)

** dream a dream (and what you see will be) **  
_mizzy2k_

* * *

_Bastian made many other wishes, and had many other amazing adventures - before he finally returned to the ordinary world. But that's... another story_.

* * *

Apparently secrets aren't the only thing Dominic Cobb will attempt to extract.

* * *

Ariadne still considers herself a rookie to the whole dreamsharing business.

 _Everything_ is strange to her. Militarizing someone's subconscious. Setting up a heist in someone's brain to steal their deepest secrets. Recreating people's fantasies. Inception. It's all really bizarre.

So when Cobb comes up with something even a consummate extractor might think odd, Ariadne doesn't notice at first.

"There's a girl. Amelia. Nine years old," Cobb starts. "A few years she was diagnosed with NICCD - neonatal intrahepatic cholestasis caused by citrin deficiency-"

"Liver disease," Yusuf interrupts, before Eames' confused face settles into the more hostile expression he wears when Cobb gets polysyllabic on them.

"Yes. That." Cobb scratches his nose, like he always does when someone derails him. "It happens sometimes in adults that symptoms of citrullinemia... Yusuf?"

"A genetic disease that causes ammonia and toxins to build up in the blood," Yusuf says.

Ariadne smiles at him to let him know she's impressed. The smile he sends back is a little strained. Ariadne's smile softens, and she looks back at Cobb. One day she'll understand why Yusuf prefers making chemicals in the back of dirty warehouses and running a highly illegal dreamden, when he could so very easily be a high-paid doctor.

She files the mystery in the back of her head, and tries to think about what this mission could be about. Cobb's never started a briefing with a medical report before, but that doesn't mean it's anything weird in the dreamsharing world.

"It's so rare for NICCD sufferers to get the citrullinemia symptoms so quickly that... the parents missed it. Amelia fell into a coma two months ago." Cobb temples his fingers, leans back against the nearest table, and looks at them seriously. "The doctors realized immediately what was wrong with her and treated her."

"So what's the problem?" Arthur asks. Ariadne looks in his direction. He's frowning slightly, his pen and moleskin in his lap. She can see his neat handwriting, _citrullinemia (sp?)_ and _medical extraction?_ and _coma_ heavily underlined.

That's Ariadne's first clue that there's something different about this job. She doesn't think she's ever seen Arthur underline things in his moleskin.

She settles in to listen to Cobb's answer, hyper alert now that there might be something strange going on.

"She didn't wake up," Cobb says.

"So... the doctors cocked something up?" Eames asks. He's leaning back in his lawn chair, looking for all the world like he might be on some sunny veranda in an exotic European location, not on a second-hand lawnchair in a grimy Californian warehouse. "Medical extraction. I'll be a nurse." He leers a little at Arthur. "You'd be my patient. Pain in the ass, right?"

"Don't be gauche," Arthur mutters.

"Would I?" Eames asks in an injured tone, throwing his best angelic look Arthur's way.

"Yes," Ariadne says, at the same time as Arthur does. Arthur's mouth twitches. It's the closest he comes during briefings to a grin, so Ariadne takes it as one and grins back.

"And the pain in the ass would be you, I'd imagine," Yusuf tells Eames. Arthur makes a choking sound and Eames looks delighted for a second.

"Mr. Cobb, the children are ganging up on me," Eames sing-songs.

Cobb sighs and shakes his head and ignores them. "I've checked and double checked the medical reports. Sent it to the usual sources. Nada. Amelia's clinically healthy. She should be waking up."

All levity in the room drops. Eames' face is a question mark. Ariadne's stomach flutters. There's the second sign this is not a regular dreamsharing job. Ariadne has to take her cues from the professionals. She folds her arms and waits to see what Cobb's about to say.

"So we're..." Eames sounds out his thoughts. "Extracting _Amelia_ from herself?"

He sounds unsure of himself. Clue three: this is _really_ not regular extractor stuff at all. It's one of Ariadne's best cues to deciphering the dreamsharing world: If Eames hasn't done something with a PASIV, it's either boring, so beyond ridiculously dangerous that even a gambler wouldn't touch it, or strangely out of the norm.

"We've done it before," Arthur says gently, into the silence. Eames looks at him, surprised. Arthur throws him a smug look for a moment. "We shouldn't need anything more than a dream-within-a-dream."

"Damn," Yusuf says, "I was looking forward to trying out a new compound."

"We may need one anyway," Cobb says. "Amelia's on a certain amount of medication. We need a compound that won't interfere with the medication she's on. I've got a meeting set up with the parents in an hour. I'll text you the list when I get it."

"I should still be able to start work, I know some of the major therapies, and what will be contraindicated," Yusuf says. "Arthur, there'll be some equipment I need, will you be able to work your magic?"

"It's called the Internet, Yusuf," Arthur says, getting to his feet and reaching over for the laptop, "and one day you will know its many mysteries for yourself."

"And when Arthur's installed you a robust antivirus on that decrepit machine you call a desktop, Yusuf," Eames says, "then I will link you to all the free porn."

Arthur stills and glances sideways at Eames. "Violence is wasted on you," Arthur informs him, after a pause, before continuing over to the set of tables Yusuf had already claimed as his own.

"Love," Eames says, sarcasm lacing the epithet, "it's always so charming to work alongside you."

"Your condescension, as always, is much appreciated, Eames, thank _you,_ " Arthur calls back, winking at Ariadne. Ariadne smothers her grin and edges a look at Eames, who looks torn between pitching a fit and laughing.

Cobb's pinning up some information on their board, some research about the illness along with a picture of Amelia. Ariadne moves over to look at it, feeling a little bit unsure. It's mostly because the architecture hasn't been discussed yet. Ariadne likes to be prepared on their jobs, usually because Cobb never estimates the time they'll have properly. Or he just enjoys putting them all under pressure because he's sadistic... or that's his management style.

If the latter, his management style is rubbish.

Ariadne hopes he's just trying to make her be a bit more forward, so tries the proactive approach. "So... do you have any ideas about the architecture or are you waiting to see Amelia in person?" she asks.

"I've already got the plans for this one," Cobb tells her. Ariadne freezes for a moment, feeling suddenly and terribly insecure. She swallows it back down. She _really_ doesn't want to remind Cobb how young and inexperienced she is. She's replaceable, after all. Cobb doesn't seem to notice her moment of crestfallen angst, because he continues, "I thought you might like to come to the meeting with me."

"Seriously?"

Cobb looks pleased at her burst of disbelief. "A female voice might be a better approach."

"So you only want me for my voice," Ariadne says, mock-dolefully, "well, I've had worse pick-up lines."

Cobb, predictably, flusters at that. "I- we- you-"

"Relax, she's messing with you." They both look to see Arthur looking at them both, the internet dongle in his hand. Ariadne shoots him an apologetic look - it's her fault for leaving it in the laptop bag, not attached to the laptop. "He's right about the female interaction. Considering the sensitivity and type of the extraction, it needs an empathetic pitch. Two men might be too hostile."

Ariadne nods.

"Although," Arthur adds, leaning in, his hands behind his back, twining the cable of the dongle between his fingers, "I'd be a little paranoid that Cobb just wants someone who won't interrupt him when he's trying to be melodramatic."

" _Hey_ ," Cobb says.

"He does like to be melodramatic," Ariadne intones.

"I'm standing right here," Cobb mutters.

"He's adorable when he's being micromanaged," Ariadne muses to Arthur, like Cobb isn't actually there. Although it would be wasted if he wasn't.

"I don't micromanage," Arthur says, "I _backseat extract_."

Ariadne rolls her eyes. "Specificity, shmecificity."

Arthur gifts her one of his rare, small smiles, and then looks at Cobb, seriously. "Be empathetic," he says, "and stick to the point. Don't be too dramatic. This is a child, not a billion dollar secret."

"Yes, mother," Cobb says.

"Melodramatic," Arthur says to Ariadne in a fake conspiratorial tone before waving the dongle at them in a 'this _is why I'm moving away now'_ gesture.

"I've never met with a client before," Ariadne says. A terrible thought strikes her. "Do I have to wear a suit? I don't own a suit. Well, I did own a suit once for my college interviews, but even then it wasn't exactly business friendly attire, I wore it down into the hotel level in the Fischer job but dreamed it as a skirt when it was really a skort, I-"

"Arthur babbled before his first client meeting too," Cobb says, looking down at her. "You'll be fine."

" _Arthur_ babbled?" Ariadne says, because she can't help herself. "Wow. I guess you can't always know everything about everyone you work with."

It's a light-hearted observation. It doesn't explain why Cobb suddenly goes cold and withdrawn for a moment. Ariadne follows his gaze over to where Arthur's pushing in the dongle and connecting to the variable signal that plagues their warehouse.

"We'd best get a move on," Cobb says. He sounds a little distant, but he moves for the door before Ariadne can mention it. She takes another look over at Arthur, tapping away efficiently as Yusuf looks on in wonder, like what Arthur does is actually magic.

Then again, they walk around in people's dreams. Anything's possible.

Ariadne smiles to herself and follows Cobb out of the warehouse to the car.

* * *

Their client's sitting room is clean, if a little sparse. There's little hint of personality, and the walls and the furnishings are all magnolia. Even the light fitting is magnolia.

It's just too much _bland_ for Ariadne.

Cobb's still explaining the procedure to Amelia's parents, but Ariadne's overwhelmed by the whole concept. She excuses herself and waits in the hallway, listening to Cobb's muffled voice, reassuring and charming as he explains the process to them.

Ariadne keeps her head down, and considers looking at the past half an hour again in the PASIV later, to see if she's as much a coward as she thinks she is for wandering out. Memories aren't as terrible for solo dreams as for shared ones, and Ariadne loves to be able to walk amongst them, relive the better ones, and expunge the negatives ones in belated catharsis. It's better than therapy.

Suddenly Ariadne realizes why they're even doing this job. It's something even a therapist can't do. The implications of dreamshare are _staggering_ , which is probably why it's all so very illegal.

Cobb's persuasive voice is a low soundtrack in the background. It's nothing but guilt that leaves Ariadne stranded out here in the narrow hallway, twisting her hair around one finger, casting uneasy glances down the corridor to where Amelia lies in her coma.

 _Lost_ , the doctors have been saying, _inside her own head._

Amelia's parents are old college friends of Mal's, and it wasn't as if the job was an impossible one - Arthur said they'd done this before. Ariadne's slightly appalled at herself for going along with Cobb for that reason alone. Last time he said that, they nearly all ended up as vegetables, lost in limbo.

Of course, that's the thought that brings it all home for Ariadne. She was a _single bad decision_ away from ending up like Amelia.

It's morbid curiosity that leads Ariadne up the small hallway and away from Cobb's low, entreating tones. Their house is much like the one Ariadne grew up in; three bedrooms, magnolia paint on the walls, the whole place a blank canvas for imagination to take flight.

Ariadne trails her fingers lightly against the wall as she casually explores. She knows which room Amelia is in. _Amelia_. Even the name is ringing against the inside of her skull, a skip and a step away from her own name. Ariadne's always had a fanciful imagination. Her childhood home was as bland as this house, and Ariadne's mother let Ariadne choose the decorations for her own room, provided she did the decorating herself. So Ariadne did. She made over her room once a month, spending her allowance on paint and pens, imagining and re-imagining cities and dreamscapes, never realising that form of creation was nowhere _near_ as pure as the PASIV would allow her in the not-so-distant future.

Amelia's just a girl, in a house like Ariadne grew up in, stuck in her own brain without even the experience of limbo beforehand to temper the terror of it. Ariadne sometimes has the plummeting feeling that experiencing limbo might be _worth_ it. It only takes remembering the sunken, horrified expression Cobb gets when something reminds him of Mal to wipe that fancy away.

She's so focussed on the parallels of her life and Amelia's that by the time Ariadne gets to the doorway she and Cobb passed earlier, Ariadne is actually startled to see the young Amelia in bed. Amelia looks younger than nine years old, but her parents have no reason to lie; she has a fuzzy halo of blonde hair and a peaceful expression on her blank, pale face.

Ariadne's heart contracts at the sight of her, arranged like she might be in a coffin, with tubes forcing breath into her and machines counting her heartbeats, and immediately Ariadne just feels ashamed at thinking of her _own_ relief at surviving in face of Amelia's suffering.

Ariadne has always hated being scared of anything, so she doesn't fall back; she goes into Amelia's room and sits down in one of the armchairs by Amelia's bed, and watches her breathe for a while with the aid of the machinery.

She wants to say something, because everyone knows comatose people should be talked to, just in case, but Ariadne has no idea what to say.

"Hi," she tries, "I'm Ariadne," but it doesn't feel like anywhere near enough. She casts around to see if Amelia has any interests. There are a lot of books, and one large hardcover is on the floor next to the bed. Ariadne bends and picks it up, smoothing her finger over the cover.

[ ](http://darlinglileve.livejournal.com/6351.html#cutid1)

It's a first edition of _The Neverending Story_ by Bastian Balthazar Bux. Ariadne can't help the smile that tugs her face. It was a huge hit when it came out, when Ariadne was small; a movie adaptation followed and Ariadne and all her friends went to see it ten times over. Most of her friends had a crush on Atreyu, but Ariadne liked small, brave Bastian the best. She empathised with him, wanting to escape into this fantasy tale rather than live real life.

"She loves that book."

Ariadne starts, and turns guiltily, her fingers clinging onto the edge of the book, not wanting to drop the treasured volume on top of being nosy and invasive. "I used to love it too," Ariadne says, smiling tentatively up at Amelia's mother, who's stood in the doorway, looking small and frail and so very sad. "I guess I was maybe more of a fan of the film, though."

"I'm glad you know of it."  
Ariadne moves to get out of the chair.

"Oh, don't. Stay." Amelia's mother moves as if to put her hand on Ariadne's shoulder, but she pauses mid-way through the movement as if thinking better of it and looks at Ariadne awkwardly instead. "Read to her. She'd like that. I'm sure she gets tired of my silly old voice," Amelia's mother says, sinking onto the nearest stool to the door. She looks tired and her eyes stray over Amelia's body like it hurts to look at her. "Your boss says he's using the story as inspiration for Amelia's therapy. It sounds silly to someone like me."  
"He didn't tell me that," Ariadne says, and flushes, because she shouldn't sound unprepared in front of a client. Amelia's mother smiles regardless. Maybe honesty is a comfort too. "Well, I can see how it would work. Turn Amelia's headspace into the fantasy world... and then open up a gate home. Get _her_ to step through it."

It's clever. Ariadne looks at Amelia, and wonders how lost inside her head she actually is, and whether they'll be able to find her.

"You still sound doubtful."

Ariadne smiles, but it's tight and there's less comfort in it than she would like. "Well, it's not as easy as if Persephone was her favourite story. It would be easy to convince her that she's had her six months in Hades and it's time to come home for Spring."

"I don't particularly like the idea of Hades being anywhere in her head."

Ariadne falters. She was trying to be helpful. She'd always loved the story of Persephone; that love had overcome her reason. Cobb shouldn't have brought her. "If Cobb's finished, I should be going," Ariadne says.

"Your boss is passionate about his work."

"He is," Ariadne says, automatically, turning more fully in the chair to look at Amelia's mother, and if it keeps Amelia out of her line of vision, well, her mother doesn't have to know it's deliberate. "He's a father," she adds, not knowing what she's going to say but searching for the words regardless, "I think this type of work really strikes a chord. Like he's doing it in the hope that should he not be _in_ this line of work, someone would do it for James or for Phillipa."

"And do _you_ think you can do this for her?"

Ariadne looks back at Amelia, because looking at a torn and withered nine year old might make her sad, but it's suddenly better than looking at her mother, old before her time, worry scarring lines onto her face and tightening her jaw. "We're going to try our best."

There's a hesitant pat on her shoulder, and Ariadne looks up into the smiling face of Amelia's mother, and Ariadne smiles back, ignoring the moisture in her eyes, and then Cobb appears in the doorway and tells her it's time to go.

On the way to the car, he confirms they've been given the job. Ariadne's feeling a mixture of odd happiness and sadness. More relief than anything else. She rides that feeling. What they do is illegal, but if they can do _good_ things like this, the _definitely_ moral alongside the _dubiously_ moral jobs, then maybe Ariadne will continue to be able to sleep at night.

She's feeling better about herself and the world than she has for a long time.

...and then she goes back to the warehouse and accidentally starts a fight.

* * *

The fight starts over a small thing—a cup of coffee.

Really it's about the lingering fear that Cobb's going to replace them all, or make one of them redundant, and Ariadne feels dreadful for starting it. And it's not a full-on fight—those, with their combined histories, involve at least one gun, and someone inevitably walks away with a black eye, and once it was Ariadne an hour before a huge exam and Miles was _furious_.

It's just one of their _odd_ fights. There's been plenty of them over the year Ariadne's been working with this team of unique individuals. It normally starts with _bickering_ and then _really heavy silence_ until Eames makes an inappropriate and lewd joke, and then Arthur looks enraged and calls Eames terrible and makes a snit about _civilised_ society, and Eames mutters about not even knowing what that _is,_ present company _included_ , and then Arthur breaks something and blames it on something else that isn't him and his inability to deal with emotions because they're something he can't control.

Cobb inevitably descends with his ever-increasing God complex (regaining his kids and performing inception to a positive end has been like a _drug_ to Dominic Cobb) and Yusuf points out something _perfectly reasonable_ which Ariadne shoots down because of how guilty she feels, and then everyone wanders around, sulking and feeling hurt, for _hours_ , and the practice sessions don't go right at _all_.

And Ariadne hadn't meant to bring up the trigger point for most of their recent fights, except this job apparently doesn't need an architect—not if Cobb already has the plans—and she's addicted to the dreaming now. She can dream without the somnacin and the PASIV, but... her own dreams always seem a lot smaller now, and weirder. The idea of it all being snatched away from her as quickly as it was _handed_ to her...

It had panicked her to the point of saying a month ago: "You could train me to take other roles in the dreamscape, couldn't you, Cobb?"

Cobb had this contemplative look, and said something about maybe taking some architecture jobs for himself now Mal wasn't going to be roaming the halls of their nightmares so often, and even though nothing's really happened—Ariadne hasn't been given much training in anything new—the idea was still out there. Prevalent. Gnawing under the surface. More firmly lodged than an incepted idea ever could be.

Until now. Because of - in a little while - the cup of coffee, which no one yet knows will be the impending incitement of such a terrible, horrible argument.

Cobb brings in a bunch of poster tubes from the trunk of his car. Ariadne's quietly amused at his confidence that Amelia's parents would let a bunch of law-breakers into their only child's head, but then she remembers how frail Amelia looks, and the amusement fizzles away into a pleasure that Cobb's confidence the job would go ahead was well placed.

Ariadne's excited despite the odd tension, and helps Cobb roll them out. As soon as the plans are all on the table Arthur comes over and looks at them, and his face goes ice cold.

"This isn't what you said," Arthur says, and his words are composed but his tone isn't; there's a strong _tremble_ in his voice. Arthur's hands clench at the edges of the nearest table, like he's struggling to stay upright; Ariadne feels almost dizzy just looking at him, because Arthur's predictable and regimented and unchanging.

It's everyone else that changes—not Arthur.

Ariadne's moods are all over the place, especially with her unsettled periods (it's no small wonder Cobb never mentioned somnacin sometimes knocking her menstrual cycle aside—she supposes begrudgingly it's not something a man would even think to mention.) 

Yusuf keeps jetting back to Mombasa for months at a time; when he comes back he's morose, the more he stays in California the happier he gets, but off he flies again, random and unpredictable.

Eames flits around from one job to the next. He doesn't change _per se_ —although he shows up with a random assortment of injuries and on one occasion a slightly gappier smile—but Ariadne never knows now if they'll be working with or without him. When he's gone they get on with it, hire someone to be a thief; forging's not always necessary. When he's there, it's like he never left in the first place; he just slots in like a chameleon, riling up Arthur and flirting with everyone like it's his last day on Earth.

Cobb's confidence grows daily. Whereas once it was heartening, now Ariadne thinks his ego might one day explode.

No, Arthur's the one who stays rigid and strong throughout it all, and out of them all, he's the one Ariadne wishes to be like when she grows up. Eames still says Arthur doesn't have any imagination, like it's a bad thing, but Ariadne sometimes feels like she has too much. Like she's wasting her life by not using it in a way society would prefer. Ariadne doesn't know. She just knows she likes being with these people, and she likes dreaming, and it's going to take a lot to make her walk away now.

Because she can't help thinking something this amazing can't last forever.

Ariadne's fingers trace over the thick papers spread out before her. The plans have to be at least ten years old, and she can see coffee stains, and smudges of pink which she thinks might be sherbet, which is a little odd. There's also definitely areas where blood or ketchup were spilled on the plans, and she resists the urge to dip and sniff the paper, see if she can tell if it smells like tomato. There's place names scrawled on the map with incredibly neat, precise handwriting. The writing looks familiar. The name she can see nearest her, _The Ivory Tower_ , sounds _awfully_ familiar. But she's more interested in what's actually going on around her than some old plans.

Especially when Arthur's looking like he's possibly about to _murder_ Cobb.

"I know this isn't quite what I said when I broke the mission," Cobb says, and his shoulders sag, but he looks at Arthur with a patient, level expression. "But the girl's lost, Arthur. I don't have a choice."

"You do. You _do_ ," Arthur says, incomprehensibly, but with such a note of actual panic in his voice that Eames shuts his mouth where he's lounging by a defunct water dispenser, obviously swallowing back a snarky comment or two. "I can't-" Arthur adds, like it's a big effort to do so.

[ ](http://darlinglileve.livejournal.com/6351.html#cutid1)

"I know," Cobb says, _again_ , and Ariadne feels awkward, like she's wandered into the room and her parents are already two-thirds of the way through a fight she doesn't understand. "It's why I took Ariadne to the meeting today and not you. I'm thinking of taking Ariadne on point."

"Woah, there." Eames pushes himself forward, eyes fixed on Cobb's face. "I'm not Arthur's biggest fan in the world, but there's a reason I keep working with you, Cobb. And it's not you. It's the fact that for some reason you have the best point man dog tailing you around the world like a kicked puppy looking for scraps of compliments from its deranged master, and-"

"I can fight my own battles, Eames. I'm not a child." Arthur snaps the words out with his usual brisk, emotionless efficiency. He doesn't even turn to look at Eames' face, and he misses the wash of emotions that tighten on Eames' face in a brutal rainbow—hostility, ambivalence, concern, regret, acceptance. Ariadne doesn't miss them. She notices more than anyone thinks. It's why she's a good architect, and why she's secretly been thinking she _would_ make a good point man- er, point woman.

It's never crossed her mind that Cobb might think so too, though, because _Arthur's_ their point man. Eames has admitted it gruffly more than enough that Arthur's the best point man in the business, even despite his prevalent lack of imagination. Eames has told her a lot over the last few months, of the teams he's worked, the jobs he's been on, and while a lot of it _has_ to be bullshit, enough of it must be true. Eames has worked with every point man in the business, even Yusuf has confirmed _that_ , and if he says Arthur is the best—without a hint of condescension—then it's plain fact.

So why the hell is Cobb saying _Ariadne_ should take point?

She's missing something. Huge. It's a sad fact that she contemplates how to _extract_ the reason from Cobb before she considers just plain _asking_ him when she gets a quiet moment, or maybe it's just sad that an extraction would hold a greater chance of succeeding than outright asking for the truth.  
"I'm fine-" Ariadne says. "I can just sit this one out. Or, y'know. Tourist. Amelia's family trusts me. We don't know why she's not waking up. She's physically healthy. Anything could be causing her to mentally withdrawal. A female presence in the dream could be key."

"You're point on this mission, Ariadne." Cobb says, hard. "Don't make me say it again." He doesn't look at anyone in particular when he says, "If anyone has trouble with that, I've got time to replace you all. Arthur, start running Ariadne through her paces. You of all people know how much a task it is to hold something like this in one head."

It turns out to be a complete understatement.

The maps are _insane_. Ariadne thinks after ten minutes of Arthur explaining the system to her that her head is going to explode, because what kind of physical place shifts its locations around? The main piece of the dreamscape stays in the centre, like a hub, and depending on which direction the dreamers go, Ariadne has to compensate with the landscape. Arthur seems quite happy explaining it to her, and confident she'll be able to manage it. She tries not to be sour that he doesn't feel worried about his job; Arthur and Cobb have been working together _forever._ It's Ariadne that's the newbie.

She wishes she had Arthur's faith in her that it _will_ fit in her head.

"This is _ridiculously_ difficult," Ariadne grumbles, realising why Cobb had muttered an excuse that necessitated him not being in the warehouse. Even Yusuf looks dazed, and he's not the subject of the discussion.

And then this is where the cup of coffee comes in. Later, Ariadne will regret saying it, but when she thinks back, it was such an innocuous statement that no one would have known it would start such a storm of a squabble.

"I need caffeine," Ariadne says.

"Caffeine won't help," Arthur says, grimly. "It's a transient environment and you need to be naturally alert to keep up with the progression of the landscape, depending on where the Mark wants to go."

"Her name's Amelia," Ariadne says, because she can't think of any other English words that would make sense next to Arthur's technobabble. "She's not a Mark. She's a sick child in a coma that we're _helping_. We're not _extracting confidential information_."

"You're just outlining the procedure, Arthur, not embedding the landscape in her head yet," Yusuf kindly interjects, as he often does when coffee is mentioned; his chemistry genius extends to beverages, too. "A cup of coffee at this stage isn't out of the question."

"Fine," Arthur says. "We'll break for a damn coffee. And while your synapses are weakening, and the world falls apart because you can't hold it long enough, I hope _Amelia_ is very happy."

His tone is exactly the same as if he was discussing something technical about the PASIV, or dreamscape engineering, but that's how Arthur snarks; quiet and patronising and so you walk away scratching your head and only realize an hour later that he'd insulted you.

"Now, pet, Ari's new at this. You might not want to give her such a hard time," Eames says, moving closer to the maps.

"You're a fountain of knowledge, Mr. Eames. Why don't you walk Ariadne through a shifting, quad-axial dreamscape with fluctuating regions?"

The thing is, Arthur's still talking as if it's a normal, actionable, perfectly reasonable suggestion. It's only Eames' reaction that clues Ariadne in to the fact that Arthur's not being perfectly civil. One day, Ariadne thinks, she'll be able to tell the difference between Arthur being a bitch and Arthur being Arthur. She doesn't know whether to rue that day or welcome it.

"I would. But I'm not insecure about my job being made redundant." Eames leans over the table, his fingers tapping over the edges of the paper like it's a piano.

"I'm not- That's not-" Arthur takes a breath to compose himself, and now Ariadne's worried, because this is twice in a day that Arthur's apparently been lost for words, and she feels uneasy again. Arthur's never lost for words, or at least a concrete reaction. "God, who even does that, extrapolates some weird subtext from a conversation without the proper weight of context-"

"English sometime this century would be a courtesy," Eames interrupts, the biggest shit-eating grin on his face.

"I'm not going to grunt in monosyllables when a few polysyllabic words say what I mean more succinctly-"

"The day you say what you really mean, pet, there'll be a bloody parade in the streets," Eames says.

"I'll skip the coffee," Ariadne interjects, actually stepping between them and smiling at Arthur with a wide, fixed, _terrified_ smile. Arthur moves his glare from Eames' face to hers. His expression softens immediately, but Ariadne feels the heat of his antagonism with Eames like a physical blow. "I'll apologise in advance for the caffeine withdrawal over the next couple of days, too."

So there's the usual bickering, and then the really heavy silence settles around them all like a heavy, suffocating blanket. Ariadne opens her mouth to ask a question about the layout, and then—as usual—Eames can't leave things alone.

"Best to wait to apologise until after the job is done, love. Unless you enjoy your coffee with a side of sarcasm."

"That's a mature response," Arthur automatically snaps.

"What are these maps, anyway?" Eames doesn't rise to the argument, which is practically an apology from him, even though there's nothing that Ariadne can see to say sorry for. Arthur's just _tetchy_ and on edge for some reason that Ariadne can't see. Eames pushes at one of the maps, and Arthur leans over to stop him pushing, and as a result one of the paper's rips.

Arthur's eyes narrow - and that's when Ariadne thinks maybe Arthur's got his stubborn blinders up again. It happens sometimes with Eames. The whole world and its dog could see the different between Eames pranking around and Eames being earnest, but sometimes Arthur takes Eames so _seriously_ that Ariadne almost forgets Arthur's capable of levity (the "paradox in my pants" incident over Christmas will _forever_ convinceAriadne of the existence of Arthur's sense of humor) and Ariadne wants the ground to swallow her up because this is going to be a _shitstorm_ of an argument.

"Christ, Eames—did the age of these papers spark off just a _little_ bit of realisation in your head that these might be _irreplaceable_? Or are you this cavalier with everything?"  
The problem when Arthur takes Eames' jokes seriously is that Eames instantly reacts with the same intensity. Eames mirrors people automatically and sometimes that's gestures and sometimes that's _moods_. "And by cavalier I suppose you mean careless-" Eames starts, stepping in closer.

"Careless is one word for it," Arthur starts. "I could add to it. Idiotic. Moronic. Unthinking-"

Eames loses any attempt at composure, even though Arthur looks as though they could be discussing the weather. "Right, I'll-"

No one finds out what Eames is about to say, or, more likely, do. Ariadne hadn't noticed Cobb's return, but she should have expected it; he usually turned up to intervene at about this point in one of Arthur and Eames' arguments. It's like he has a sixth sense for it. Perhaps he's just training for James and Phillipa's inevitable, inescapable puberty.

"Are they bickering _again_?" Cobb says. Arthur looks at Cobb with a patient 'he _started it'_ expression which is blatantly untrue in this case (as Arthur's the one who did the majority of her substantial induction into dreamsharing—and in the time she spent with him training there were no murderous projections or possibly lethal secrets like with Cobb's portion of the training—she tends to be loyal to him over any of the others, to a point. Arthur passed that point more than a good minute ago.)

"It's just a matter of personal dream approach," Yusuf says, helpfully. "A clash of preferred technique. I would lend to Arthur's expertise in this area as he's dreamed the world before."

Ariadne opens her mouth automatically, only for Cobb to actually _clamp his hand around her mouth_. She's so shocked she goes slack, and then shoots him the worst death glare she can muster, and he lets her go. "You'd only say something you'd regret," Cobb tells her, and Ariadne bristles, but he's right so she mimes zipping her mouth shut. "Kids, grab your coats. We're going out."

"Cobb," Arthur protests, "this is a huge task-"

"Which needs time and the appropriate attention. No one's in the right headspace. We need to de-stress."  
" _Cobb_ ," Arthur says, and his voice sounds a lot more strained now.

Cobb sighs, and gives Arthur a mostly unreadable expression. Ariadne can see a little bit of sadness, and a little bit of self-loathing, and a jumble of something else which passes between them like a secret handshake that makes Arthur's expression tighter than normal. If Ariadne didn't know Arthur, she wouldn't have noticed he's more stressed, but she recognises now that despite his mouth being almost permanently pressed into a thin line, there's a downturn to the right side that betrays how tense he's feeling.

"Amelia's been in a vegetative state for two years now. An extra _week_ or two won't hurt her," Cobb says eventually. "Us being tense and unhappy _might_."

Arthur sags minutely, until Eames grins speculatively at him and Arthurmakes this _huff_ under his breath which is pretty terrifying. Ariadne tries not to hurry for her coat.

* * *

Cobb's idea of team bonding and relaxing is to go to the beach. It's one of the reasons why Ariadne doesn't mind being out in San Jose and not in a quaint Paris apartment which had been her plan for life for as long as she can remember.

Dreaming with the PASIV, doing a job with her team, and easy access to the sea, it's more than worth the sacrifice.

There's some sort of carnival-stroke-market thing going on today, which Cobb navigates successfully to a ratty looking food vendor which produces some surprisingly excellent stuff. Ariadne goes for it and comes out with a hamburger which she thinks she would possibly kill for and a corn dog. Eames has one too and immediately makes a lewd penis reference which Ariadne thinks is directly responsible for Arthur coming away with nothing but a bottle of water.

As they wander over the beach itself, Ariadne slipping off her shoes and socks long before they get to the sand and stashing them in her shoulder bag because she likes the feel of granite beneath her toes as much as she likes sand and the sea, Yusuf buys cotton candy for everyone.

Arthur's the only one to keep his in its plastic bag, and she watches it swing in his hand as they walk, distracted by the way the light glances from it. When she looks up, Eames is twisting his candy floss into ever-increasingly rude shapes, apparently for Arthur's benefit. Arthur only manages a fleeting smile when Eames shapes his candy into a cock and balls, unfortunately right in front of an appalled mother and her two seven-year old twin girls.

From Eames' example, and with her hamburger and corn dog settling into an uncomfortable rolling dog fight in the pit of her stomach, she leans against the metal railings separating the sand from the promenade, and starts creating a mini city with her candy floss. She sits cross legged on the sand, keeping her back to the railing, waiting for the queasiness to calm before she goes in the sea. She frowns as she pushes at her candy floss with her finger. Eames made it look so _easy_.

"Ever the architect," Cobb says, sitting down next to her. Yusuf is off paddling in the water already, but he has an iron constitution. Arthur, as ever, is hovering close to Cobb, and Eames casually joins in next to her, smiling in that knowing way he has that makes her feel like she's one of the crew, a sharp counterpoint to the way she's been feeling since Cobb announced the job.

That panic is still there, bubbling under the surface despite her new job role. Maybe _especially_ with her job role, and the sinking feeling she's not going to manage the job anywhere _near_ Arthur's standards.

She needs to change the direction of her thoughts before she ends up losing any more of her self esteem. The conversation reorients her and she shapes one of the candy towers into a pointed spire. "Not so much on this job, apparently."

"You'll get the hang of it," Cobb says comfortingly, rubbing his stomach absent-mindedly. The food had been too much for him too. Ariadne can't remember when she last ate before the hot vendor food, and maybe that's the problem they're all having, except for Arthur, who was smart enough to stick to water, who still has his candy floss bagged up at his side.

"Why did you pick me? In Paris," Ariadne says, out of nowhere. She didn't even realize the question had been bugging her until it's out of her mouth.

"Miles said you were his best student," Cobb says amicably with a shrug. He's squinting away from her, at the relatively busy beach for a Thursday afternoon, but maybe that's due to the market carnival thing. "I used to be his student, a long time ago. It's why I know he can pick out the best students, the ones with the aptitude for dreamsharing."

"Because he picked you," Ariadne says, and doesn't let his smugness go without an eye roll. "I meant... Why did he, why do you pick architect students for creating dream worlds?" Ariadne leans backwards, shading her eyes but glancing up at the sun regardless, squinting furiously. "Why not artists?" She glances to Eames to punctuate the thought, but Cobb responds.

"Artists do tend to have more imagination," Cobb allows, "but the few I've taken in... the world _looks_ amazing, but the feel of it isn't there. The _structure_. Architects tend to dream up the same kind of beauty, but they remember to lay foundations in first. They put the basics in and build on them; they're not tempted to go backwards. It's a specialised _kind_ of art that lends itself to dreamshare."

"Not that I'm trying to talk myself out of work—I'm just curious—but why not a writer, then? Some writers I've met are more visual than the artists I know. And they have to have structure in their work to fit plots in, beginnings, middles, ends..." Ariadne looks down from the sun, smiling oddly at the afterburn of flickering lights in her vision, thinking about trying to catch one but reigning the impulse in.

"Took one in once," Cobb says, with a shrug. "The world was delightful, dizzying, the most beautiful place I've ever been. Rich, full of life, full of imagination. We took the Mark down a level more and the second dream was as close to reality as you can get without using memories, and the Mark didn't believe it. Didn't really believe real _life_ after that for a long time."

"More than that," Eames breaks in. Ariadne startles and then is embarrassed—she had almost forgotten he was there. That was one of his key talents. Chameleon. Slide into the background or into a key role, as much as required. Ariadne's glad Cobb doesn't want her to train as a forger, because it seems like it might be even harder work than training to be on point. "Too much imagination is a bad thing in our business."

"Too much?" Ariadne blinks, and it's not to dispel the after image of the sun dotting around the sky. "But you rib Arthur every day for not having _any_ -"

Arthur bristles at the second-hand insult; Ariadne shoots him a look of apology. Eames grins, and obviously starts to think about how he can use other people to deliver his barbs and snide comments to Arthur. He looks delighted, and Arthur looks decidedly unimpressed.

"Dreamers with no imagination at all build from memory," Cobb says. "And that's the quickest route to the subconscious realising there's an intruder. The more real a dream, the quicker you feel if it's being messed with. But dreamers with too much imagination-"

Cobb looks across to Eames for support, obviously unable to find the right phrasing of it, and even Eames pushes his mouth into a line, searching for the right word.

"Some of them get lost," Arthur says, and Ariadne turns to him. Arthur's looking out to the sea. He's sitting cross legged in the sand like he's on a tiled floor not on sand, and his back is _ruler_ straight, and seriously, Ariadne feels empathy—he _must_ have back problems. Or, alternatively, a chance at never having a back problem at all. He turns his head to look at her, and his expression is impassive. "Sometimes the world they build is so wild you can't find the information to extract, it's impossible to differentiate the fact from the fiction."

"Like limbo-" Ariadne begins, but Cobb looks _tired_ all of a sudden and she swallows the word back in.

"Or if you take a dreamer with too much imagination into a more realistic dream, like an extraction, sometimes their subconscious can't help it; the storyline of the dream diverts too much. Fears become monsters, daydreams become part of the dream, fantasies manifest and let the subject know too quickly they're being messed with, and-" Arthur turns to Cobb, one eyebrow raised, "remember the Ellison job?"

"Urgh," Cobb says, rubbing his chest automatically like a tic he can't get rid of; he frowns down at his hands like they are giant traitors. He faces Ariadne to explain, "The projections were all dressed up like X-Men."

"Cobb got speared out of the dream by Wolverine," Arthur says, "It was a mistake to take the client in."

"The guy wanted to be a superhero," Cobb says, "I had no idea my architect at the time was pissed off about the X-Men movie."

"The whole _world_ was pissed off about the X-Men movie," Arthur points out. "They only kept in _two_ of Whedon's lines. _Two_."

"It was tragic," Cobb says, in this flat dreary voice like he's heard this rant before.

"And one of them they let Halle Berry butcher," Arthur adds.

"Worst moment of her entire _career_ ," Eames says in an agreeable tone like he has _no clue what they're going on about_ , but Ariadne has heard him make X-Men references before; it's disturbing how easily Eames keeps pretending to be someone else, even around them. She wonders absently who the real Eames is, and doubts she'll ever find out. The thought makes her sad, but not for herself. She hopes someone finds out who the real Eames is; someone _else_ if it can't be Eames himself.

"And then sometimes, writers get lost." Ariadne thinks somehow it's part of Arthur's X-Men rant, but it's the sudden sombreness in his tone that's the clue; that, and his face has become cold, and distant, and even _more_ like stone than his _I'm on the job_ face. Arthur's tone is icy, but almost whimsical, like he's missing something that he can never have; Cobb's voice goes a bit like it when something reminds him of Mal.

"Sometimes they never want to come out of the world they've made. Even though it's a first level dream and not limbo. They _know_ it's not real but it's better than facing the real world," and there's a real bitter, _mocking_ tone to Arthur's voice now, almost like self loathing, and Ariadne's heart tumbles in her chest _hard_ , and she moves forward instinctively—only to be stopped by Eames' arm, straight and hard across the planes of her shoulders.

Ariadne looks at him, hurt, a bitter word already halfway out of her throat, and Eames looks back patiently, no change of expression, but it's times like this when Eames seems wise beyond his years. It's his observation skills, the ones that make him an excellent forger, the skill none of them have to his degree, that sometimes manifest in an almost precognition—noticing something wrong before anyone else does, and Ariadne looks again at the scene to see what she has missed.

She catches it—the mirroring furrow between the eyes, matching on Arthur's and Cobb's faces. There's history here, an old argument. Arthur gets to his feet, coldness cutting across his face like a shadow, and Cobb follows him up smoothly, his expression hard like steel. Ariadne copies them by instinct; she stumbles, and Eames helps her up. He's tensed like he's ready to step in the middle. Like he can smell a fight in the air, here in the sunshine, on the sand, while the sea glitters like the largest sapphire in the world behind them; an incongruously pretty backdrop.

"I know what you're planning with this job," Arthur says, and it cuts directly through the almost jovial air they'd managed to create like a huge fucking _cleaver_ , shattering it neatly. Arthur twists to face Cobb in one smooth movement, and apart from that tiny furrow, Arthur's face is carefully, carefully blank. "I know what you're _asking_."

"Nothing that can't be done," Cobb replies, his tone as light as Arthur's, but just as cutting regardless.

" _Dom_ -" Arthur breathes, and that's when Ariadne inhales, clasping her hands to her mouth and earning a streak of candy on her cheek from the pink frothy sugar city she had forgotten she was holding, because Arthur never says Cobb's first name, _never_ , it's always formality with Arthur, procedure, one hundred per cent of the time. Ariadne had to threaten Arthur with a spork for him to call her by her first name. Ariadne risks a look at Eames, to see if he is as uncomfortable as she is, but he just looks patient, like he knew this was about to happen.

"This girl is lost, Arthur. We're not extracting a petty commercial secret. We're extracting her _personality_. You know the scope of what we need." Cobb tilts his head, strong, and stares straight at Arthur. "We need Fantasia."

The word means something to Arthur, because he tenses even more, and Ariadne would have guessed that was an unlikely feat except it's happening before her; Arthur personifies _tense_ at the best of times, and this is feeling awfully a long way away from the best of times.

Then she realizes that the world means something to her too, and she can't form words for a moment, because the concept is _beautiful_. Of _course_ that's where she's heard the name Ivory Tower before...

"Wait a second." Eames manages to find his voice and uses it to barge in, even though he's interrupting the stare that Arthur is directing at Cobb, a stare that could probably level cities. Ariadne idly wonders then if anyone has done that in a dream, and the answer is swift: of course they have. " _Fantasia_. You're going to recreate the Neverending Story, in a _dream_." Eames whoops then, loud and unembarrassed, doing a funny half-spin on his heel before turning back to them, arms spread wide. "That's _insane_. And genius."

"So we're recreating the biggest kid's story in the world, after Harry Potter," Ariadne says, slowly digesting the idea, already feeling ten years younger already as the nostalgia of her youth catches up with her. "Isn't that like, recreating a memory? So it's dangerous."

"You've never physically been there, so you don't have memories or experiences." Cobb shrugs.

" _I've_ been there, Cobb," Arthur snaps, Dom's surname fully back in place, Arthur's control obviously there as well. "I'm glad you have the option to forget about that, but I don't." Arthur steps forwards, and his eyes are flint-hard.

"Best step back, sweetheart," Eames murmurs into Ariadne's ear, but it's redundant—she doesn't have Eames' keen eyes or people skills, but she knows dangerous people when she sees them, and Arthur's radiating dangerous.

"And Mal promised me I would never have to go back," Arthur finishes, delivering what is supposed to be the final blow. Arthur tenses, like he's expecting Cobb to fight back, but Cobb just _sags_ , and that makes it worse, like a thousand years in limbo have just crawled into his shoulders and onto his face and _settled_ there.

"I've danced around the truth for your sake, Arthur. And I know you work yourself ragged to be the best point man in the world, but it stings me to watch you do that, when you _could_ be the best _architect_ out there as easy as breathing."

Ariadne fumbles in her bag lining for her totem, feeling uncertain and vulnerable. When she edges a look at Eames, she catches a glimpse of something in his hands that he quickly pockets and she feels less crazy.

Arthur looks like he wants to swear, or punch Cobb; instead, his reaction is pure _Arthur_. He stays still, tilts his chin, and if looks could kill, Cobb would be jelly on the pavement. He's cool, professional and _bristling_ with how lethal he actually could be if pushed any farther. "You just crossed a line you shouldn't have, Cobb."

Cobb's voice is just as quiet when he says, obtusely, "Mal was the reason you weren't left there in the first place."

Arthur visibly flinches. "Low blow."

"She wouldn't hesitate doing the same for this girl."

" _Lower_ blow," Arthur snaps, but the tension across his shoulders dissipates with his words. Cobb opens his mouth to say something else, and Arthur's eyes narrow immediately. "I'm armed. Call me by my real name and I _swear_ I am not so precious about my impeccably clean police record that I'll refrain from shooting you in public."

Arthur moves his hands to the small rise in the line of his jacket that Ariadne hadn't even noticed, and Cobb holds his hands out like a surrender, his half-eaten cotton candy blowing in the wind. Arthur swallows, looks absolutely _torn_ for a second, and then his face relaxes and he turns, heading back for the sea. Ariadne looks to Cobb for a cue, and follows when Cobb does.

"Call me when it's time to go back," Arthur says. "And you owe me candy," he adds, calling it backwards without looking, his voice thin. "Lots of candy."

"Strawberry sherbet and Tootsie Pops," Cobb says. "I remember."

"His real name-" Eames starts, sounding _hugely_ curious and so much like himself in the middle of all this strangeness that Ariadne shoulder bumps him companionably, and Eames predictably steals the last of her cotton candy in retaliation.

Eames joins Yusuf in the water, ostensibly to escape Ariadne's wrath over the cotton candy, but really because he's been dying to join Yusuf in the sea since they got down onto the beach. Ariadne recognised at least the way his eyes traced Yusuf's path in the water. It was longing. It was what Ariadne had felt, that night after fleeing from her first day of dreaming. Furious at Cobb for shredding her face apart with glass fragments, but _longing_ all the same for that sensation of pure creation. The longing eventually won out over the fury.

Longing usually did.

Ariadne's more sensible than Yusuf and Eames, or that's what she tells herself. She moves to stand by Arthur, on the damp sand, where the incoming tide laps over her toes. Arthur's removed his shoes too by the time she gets there; they join his candy floss to dangle from one hand. His pant legs are rolled up neatly, and he's wearing his socks like a pocket handkerchief poking out of his front jacket pocket.

It's a companionable silence, and Ariadne feels relieved that they can still have this even after Cobb and Arthur have fought. She feels relief and a quiet sort of happiness at this, her odd little found family.

And then Arthur makes this _keening_ sound. Low in his throat, like he's been shot.

Eames and Yusuf don't notice at first, too busy still splashing around, but Ariadne does, and her heart clenches at his stricken expression. Arthur turns from her, looking out into the sea with an expression that _hurts_ , and Ariadne nearly reaches out for him automatically without thinking, pulling her hand back when she remembers last second that Arthur isn't particularly touchy-feely.

She tries to follow Arthur's gaze, and he's staring at Eames. He swallows, and it's like he's having trouble scraping oxygen into his lungs, and he says, helplessly, "He doesn't even know what he's asking me to give _up_."

Ariadne can't help herself. She doesn't understand the moment—she only understands Arthur's in some sort of pain, and that's enough for her to want to act. She can't stop herself this time. Her hand reaches out, touches his elbow and he flinches, looking at her with wide, hollow eyes. And then he shakes himself, and his mouth sets into that thin, heavy line she's more familiar with.

"We should get back," Arthur says, his voice low and uncertain. He shoves his free hand in a pocket and starts to walk back, shoes still dangling from the other. Ariadne watches him go. She wasn't cold before but now she can feel it, down to her bones. The bright sunshine is a decoy to the actual temperature of the day.

"What did you say?" Eames demands, splashing towards her. His expression is set in shadow as he stares after Arthur, a frown on his face. Ariadne can see the frown, and she doesn't understand it for the longest time.

"I didn't say anything," Ariadne says. Arthur's heading for the embankment, and Eames is still frowning at him. Eames can see something she can't. She looks again, focussing. His shoes in his left hand dangle, swaying oddly. "He's less tense."

"He's absolutely pissed off, but you're right. He's looser. And look at his feet."

Ariadne looks, and tilts her head to the side, like a different angle might give her a better appreciation. She hadn't noticed anything different at all, but she does now. She wonders if it's Eames' talents, or if it's because Eames just watches Arthur more than she does. "He's walking toe to heel, not heel to toe."

"Like a dancer," Eames murmurs. Ariadne doesn't know if he realizes he's said that out loud. He shakes himself, and gives her a broad smile she doesn't believe. "Looks like it's time to get back to work."

"It is getting rather chilly," Yusuf says from behind them. Ariadne startles. She hadn't realized he'd been so close, but it makes sense. Something big enough to cause that much of an argument between Arthur and Cobb is something huge, something _terribly_ secret, and they're so closed knit _any_ secret is going to be a focal point of their lives.

They're not as relaxed as Ariadne had hoped they would be as they walk back to their headquarters, but they're also not as tense. She thinks of the emails she's been getting from her friends in corporate operations about their teambuilding exercises, which have mostly included building things from newspaper and abseiling and really odd buffet food. Ariadne much prefers Cobb's version, even though they're all quiet on the way back. Eames seems oddly entranced by how Arthur's walking, swapping between heel-to-toe and toe-to-heel at the oddest of moments.

She thinks maybe Arthur hurt his foot; he's stoic enough not to mention something like that.

The truth is much worse than that.

A few metres away from the front door of the warehouse, Arthur stops. His expression is blank, and he's staring at the door like it's the worst thing in the universe.

Ariadne slows and comes to a stop a few paces behind him. The others stop beside her. It happens a lot in people who work together—the hive mentality. One holds back and the rest do automatically.

Arthur's shoulders are tense, and he looks like he might never move again.

"Do you know they've done studies about memory?" Arthur says. Ariadne almost wishes she could see his face, but she's locked to the spot by her own fear. Arthur is reliable and dependent and doesn't act oddly, but this is out of character. For Arthur to break routine, it has to be something terrible. His voice is cold and flat, like during their briefings, when he's relaying clinical facts. "That feeling when you walk to the kitchen to do something, but by the time you get there you've forgotten what you're going for. We have that feeling when we're dreaming from the very beginning of the dream. Like there's something we've forgotten."

"We _use_ that feeling," Cobb says, "to do our job."  
"Did you know that studies say it's perfectly reasonable to go from one room to the next and forget the reason why you even made the move? It's because the brain compartmentalizes everything. Memory's not continuous. Our brains are more like computers. We have to put things in blocks. Doors, thresholds, they're a natural barrier. Our brain automatically uses the sensation of passing through a door to _close_ the door on that block of memory."

"Trust you to research _that_ ," Eames says, already rolling his eyes, but he has his hands in his pockets. It's defensive body language. He's just on edge as the rest of them.

"Doors are just symbols. But then, so are totems. And they're sometimes the only thing keeping us grounded."

"We can do this later," Cobb says, edging a little closer, a small frown creasing his forehead like he's only just now figuring out something is wrong. Ariadne wants to slap him round the back of his head. It's a common impulse around him and Ariadne's well practised at holding it back in. She's had more than her fair share of revenge in the dream world. Once she "accidentally" dropkicked him down a well. _Good times_ , she thinks, and feels instantly saddened; this moment feels the farthest from good times she's ever felt.

"The longer we wait the harder it is to make a clean break of it." Arthur squares his shoulders, like moving through the door into the warehouse is going to kill him, and Ariadne swallows hard, tasting acid. She doesn't like this day. She really doesn't like it. She wants to cry or crack apart the sky. She wants to dream up a world exactly like this moment just so she can destroy it. She wants Arthur to stay outside, and go back to the beach with them, or at least stay where he is, because if he moves, Ariadne feels like the world might end if he does. It's melodramatic and over the top, but that's the only way she can describe it.

Arthur steps forward, because wishing that something isn't real means squat in the real world. He pauses, and turns then, and his face is the most terrible thing that Ariadne's ever seen, because there's pain in it. And Arthur never shows emotion, _never_ , and this is worse than _being_ in pain herself-

"It's time for a parade," Arthur says, clear, concise, impossible; he looks at Eames helplessly for a moment, then turns to the door and says, in a much less composed voice, in a voice that's almost a whisper, "I don't want to die."

And then he pushes open the door and steps through.

The four of them stand there stupidly for a moment, just staring at the door as it swings shut behind him, and they're frozen. A sound tears loose from the back of Ariadne's throat and it hurts like it's grazing her tonsils. She looks at the others in nothing but disbelief, and her heart clenches in her chest for a moment; Cobb looks worried, Yusuf upset, and Eames... The expression on Eames' face...

Ariadne can't describe it. She _feels_ it, though. It's like rage and fury and confusion blended into a cocktail of fire; it's enough to kick start her body into movement, and she's running with Eames to the door, blind with panic.

Eames gets there first. The door snaps back, slams into the wall of the warehouse like the sound of a gunshot, and Ariadne's imagination is awash with mindless terrors - fire washing through the warehouse and Arthur's body on the floor in a puddle of blood or maybe Arthur will have disappeared and there'll be no sign he ever existed-

All her fanciful fears dissipate in a second when she skids to a halt on seeing Arthur halfway across the warehouse, throwing his shoes into the corner. He turns on hearing them, and he _smiles and waves_.

Ariadne feels abruptly silly - a combination of silliness at thinking such odd disasters would await them in the warehouse and silliness at not adding _insanity_ to her list.

And then Arthur starts taking his clothes off.

"Um," Cobb says, slightly awkwardly, "this is a shared space. You have co-workers. We like, um, being able to work without feeling awkward."

Arthur calmly drops his pants onto the chair he'd automatically draped his jacket over, and tilts his head as he peels off his waistcoat and starts on his shirt. "I'm uncomfortable, Dom. You can't expect me to work like this."

Ariadne frowns. There's something different about Arthur's tone, and not just his more casual use this time of Cobb's first name. She holds back cautiously, not wanting to blister into this situation that she doesn't understand.

Arthur pulls off his shirt as Cobb frowns at him, and Ariadne finds a blush creep up on her cheeks as she can't quite stop staring. Underneath his pristine clothing, Arthur's. Well. _Fit_. Then she stares for a different reason as Arthur picks up his water bottle and tips it over his head. He shakes his head a little, his normally pristine hair still slicked back. Ariadne had a boyfriend in college who used pomade like Arthur does; she supposes the one dose of water isn't quite enough to dispel it.

"The fuck _is_ this stuff," Arthur mutters, and Ariadne fumbles for her totem again, because _what?_

"I don't know if we'll be able to concentrate if you walk around like that," Cobb eventually manages, as Arthur stands there nonplussed, standing in his blue-checked boxer shorts (well, Ariadne reflects, there's _one_ question she _wouldn't_ have asked about Arthur answered regardless) and socks like nothing's wrong. Like the whole team isn't staring at him and his sculpted abs.

Arthur looks at Cobb seriously for a moment, and then cracks an odd sort of smile. "What if I said I worked better like this?" Arthur steps out from behind the table, displaying the curve of his legs to great effect. He's acting like nothing's wrong, even though this is completely out of character.

"Ariadne and I have no complaints," Eames breaks in, with an exaggerated leer on his face. Arthur rolls his eyes at Eames, but looks back towards Cobb. Ariadne shoots an annoyed look on principle at Eames, but she can't bring herself to lie; she could sort of stare at Arthur's naked chest for a long time without getting bored. She's not going to be able to look at any businessman in a suit without wondering what's beneath now, dammit.

"Relax, Dom. You think I run all the way from my apartment every morning in a suit? I've got my jogging clothes in the back." Arthur tilts his head at the small area in the back where they all mostly drop their stuff during work, and turns to go.

Ariadne turns, because it would be completely unprofessional to watch him walk the length of the warehouse, even though his legs look as toned as his stomach, and she is only _human_. As she glances over at the others, Cobb is looking up at the ceiling, his expression slightly strained, Yusuf looks unaffected, and Eames isn't making any pretence at not watching Arthur walk away which is so ridiculously in character for him that Ariadne feels grounded despite Arthur's behaviour change.

She doesn't know what to think that Arthur's walking toe-to-heel the whole way. She's not Eames and she can't decipher people that easily.

She goes back to the maps but feels lost, and she doesn't even turn when Arthur taps her on the shoulder. He's wearing sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, and doesn't look _too_ odd—they're probably designer work-out clothes knowing Arthur's pristine taste. "Things are a bit of a jumble at the moment... But one thing I do remember. An argument. I was too harsh," he says, and Ariadne looks at him and can't _help_ but stare. She's confused and Arthur looks... _different._ He's obviously tried to wash his hair, and it still looks normal, all slicked back, except a few hairs are curling at the nape of his neck, against his forehead, and it softens his face a little. "I'm sorry."

"Are you _apologizing_?" Eames demands from across the room where he's helping Cobb and Yusuf with some particularly fragile looking equipment that Ariadne kinda remembers from Chemistry class, but she can't remember the name of half of the pieces. It doesn't look like he's helping much, more like he's _distracting_ himself, and Ariadne doesn't blame him. It's easier to think about _things_ rather than Arthur's weird mood shift. "Because you should. You're being odd."

"I'm not apologizing to _you_ ," Arthur shoots back, lifting an eyebrow in Eames' direction, but instead of the controlled, thin press of his mouth that usually accompanies a jibe in Eames' direction, there's a curve of a wicked smirk on his mouth instead.

"Wouldn't want to be too out of character," Eames mutters, as Yusuf slaps his hands away from meddling with one of Yusuf's thousand glass jars of strange liquids and compounds.

"Getting out of character is sort of the point," Arthur says, grabbing a chair and straddling it backwards, reaching for something under the tables. He emerges with a laptop, and shoves at the papers. Some of them casually fall on the floor and Arthur doesn't bat an eyelid, even though he was screaming bloody murder at Eames' 'cavalier' attitude to them earlier.

Arthur flips up the lid, and hums contentedly under his breath for a moment as it loads. Ariadne pulls up a chair to watch him as he pushes in a dongle to connect to the internet, and as the laptop's screen darkens for a moment in its loading process she sees Arthur's face freeze in the middle of his humming, like he's just realized he _has_ been humming, and then there's an almost forced physical tension that flits across his face as he makes himself continue to hum until Google Chrome loads up and fills the screen.

"Can you pass me that candy floss?"

Ariadne blinks at the question, then reaches across the table, gingerly picking up Arthur's casually discarded bag of pastel colored candy and passing it to him. He rips it open and starts shoving handfuls into his mouth. Ariadne stares at him as he loads up YouTube, and starts watching cartoons.

"Um," Ariadne says, after a minute of _Super Mario_ , "how is this supposed to help?"

"Arthur doesn't watch cartoons," Arthur says, "when else am I supposed to catch up. Have you _seen_ this one?"

Ariadne stares. "Arthur?"

"Hmm-mm?" Arthur turns to look at her, looking slightly annoyed. He sighs and reaches out to slap at the space bar and the video stops playing. He grabs for another handful of candy floss. There's a clear look of realisation on his face. "You know, this is odd. I can remember arguing with you, but Arthur's just holding back a ton of stuff. It's rather annoying. You're Ariadne, right? It's difficult to keep track of names."

"I- _what_? Arthur, what-"

Arthur sighs, and slams the laptop lid down. "Dom, seriously, you're a shit. Who doesn't brief a team that they're working with a multiple?" Arthur shoves a hand in Ariadne's direction, and Ariadne looks at his hand like it's an alien object. "I'm Seb. Pleased to meet you."

Ariadne continues to stare at his hand, and then she shakes herself and automatically holds out her hand, because she's an idiot but she's not a _rude_ idiot, and if multiple means what she _thinks_ it means, well, it's hardly Arthur's fault. She shakes Arthur's - Seb's? - hand quickly, and brushes her hand on her pants.

She doesn't know what to call him in her head. Calling him something else would be like agreeing he's gone, and he's not. Arthur's sitting _right in front of her._

"Oh, sorry about that, I get sugar _everywhere,_ " Arthur says, and his voice _is_ different, the rhythm's all off, and he's a little shyer, a little _friendlier_ in his tone, and Ariadne doesn't believe he's sorry at all.

"Excuse me a minute," Ariadne says. Arthur rolls his eyes and flips the laptop open again, jabbing at it. She hurries to her feet and over to where Cobb is standing, looking as frightened as he probably _should_ be, considering how she's feeling. She pushes right into Cobb's personal space. "Do you want to explain this? What the hell's going on?"

Cobb looks sheepish. He puts a hand on the back of his neck, and looks up at the ceiling. Ariadne just gets angrier. They routinely go into each other's heads. Something like _this_ is crazy. It's unfair.

It's completely odd and Ariadne can't wrap her head around it. Arthur's her constant and now it's like he isn't even there.

"Arthur," Cobb starts, and he brings his gaze down from the ceiling. It's more defiant now, like he's daring them to tell him he's done something wrong. "Arthur doesn't really exist."

"Excuse me?" Eames says, losing all pretence at being useful. His fingers break whatever piece of equipment he's holding. Yusuf's face falls, but Eames is being obvious enough about his current aura of hostility; Yusuf isn't going to brave setting him off any more. "What the hell do you mean Arthur's not real, he's right there. This is real life, Cobb. Your totem might be malfunctioning but ours are just fine, so if this is an attempt to be stupid, well, I never thought you had to work hard at that-"

"I'm sorry to blunt your ego like this, Eames, but Arthur's a forge." Cobb shrugs a little, and looks over to where Arthur's honest-to-goodness _giggling_ at what's on the screen, still eating mouthfuls of the candy and he's loose, relaxing into the chair, tapping his fingers on the table, a wide grin stretching his face. "He used to be like Amelia, lost in a dream. Mal and I got him out, but we had to... make some adjustments."

"Arthur's a _forge_ ," Eames repeats, like he didn't hear Cobb, but Ariadne sees his fingers dig into his leg and it's disbelief more than anything.

Ariadne's numb, too numb to react, because this feels weird. Unreal. Except not even an extractor would use this dream scenario on a Mark, because it's so crazy. A sane brain would reject it, and the warehouse is stubbornly stable.

Ariadne might be frozen, but Eames doesn't stay frozen.

It's because Eames, like Cobb, errs on the melodramatic that Ariadne doesn't even feel surprise that Eames pulls his gun on Cobb.

The fact that she sits and calculates an escape strategy is probably just a sad reflection on the fact she's way too immersed in the criminal world now.

A criminal world where Arthur isn't real, and Ariadne's sorry, but what the _fuck?_ It's going to take Ariadne's brain longer to wrap around that one than the whole Fantasia dreamscape.

Cobb swallows automatically, and then looks coolly at Eames, his 'facing _down projections'_ expression. "All right," Cobb says, his tone smooth apart from the small hitch in his voice betraying the fact he believes Eames might shoot him, "I can understand that response-"

"Really," Eames says flatly. His eyes are dark. "Because I might not. Explain it to me."

Cobb flickers a look at Ariadne, who is the closest to Eames and stands a much better chance of disarming Eames. Eames' finger isn't on the trigger, but that doesn't mean much. Ariadne's been around them in too many dreams with firearms and undergone enough basic training to know it's just regular firearm safety.

She doesn't particularly feel inclined to rush to Cobb's rescue. Not until he stops being so crazy.

"You don't know what happened," Cobb says, "to necessitate-"

"Does _anyone_ like it when he's polysyllabic?" Eames asks Ariadne, still keeping his gun trained on Cobb's chest.

 _Only aim at something you're willing to kill_ is pounding through Ariadne's head instead of anything else. Arthur's words from her last firearm training. _Only aim at something you're willing to kill_.

"Not enough dislike to shoot him over it," Ariadne says, shakily. Cobb exhales in obvious relief, as Eames nods at her and holsters his weapon. "But I might be willing to join in on the bodily harm if his explanation isn't good enough."

She tilts her head at Cobb. Defiantly. Daring him to have a problem with her anger.

"One of these days I'm going to get through a working day without you all offering to shoot me," Cobb mutters, sulkily.

"Maybe one of these days you'll not be a complete arsehole," Eames says.

There's a long, slow moment where no one says anything. Ariadne feels sick, and uncertain, but mostly sick to the stomach. She'd thought the world had rotated a hundred and eighty degrees when Cobb introduced her to dreamsharing, and had been sure that nothing else would be able to pull the rug from under her carefully constructed world so thoroughly again.

She was wrong.

The idea of Arthur, stable Arthur, _not being real_.

He's been her foundation of the dreamsharing world, and without that, without Arthur-

Ariadne still can't think about it. It's too much to process. Especially with Arthur sitting over on the other side of the warehouse, the bright colors of his cartoon flickering over his face.

Arthur's face.

 _Arthur_.

She knows him. He's her _friend_. He's a forge. Before, when she shook Arthur's hand, it was an automatic thing. A vague track in the back of her head reminded her that Multiple Personality Disorder was a medical condition and no one's fault, and sometimes, as with other conditions like it, people got ashamed and didn't like to talk about it. But this is something else entirely. This is messed up.

No, this isn't going to settle in her brain properly any time soon at all.

"Mal and I had no choice," Cobb says levelly. "When we found Sebastian - Arthur," he clarifies, "he was sick. He's essentially the same, just with some... adjustments to be able to function effectively in the dreamscape without losing control."

"Essentially the same," Eames repeats, and doesn't soften his angry expression. "Christ, Cobb, you're a fucking knob. At least tell me you have a fucking clue why I nearly orphaned Jimmy and little Phillipa."

"I'm..." Cobb's eyes linger for a moment on the rise in Eames' jacket where he's stashed his gun back in its holster. "I'm aware."

He's clearly got no idea that Eames is still an inch from shooting him in the face.

Ariadne's a thousand miles past being unimpressed with the situation, and is not in the mood to inform Cobb of the probable impending violence to his person.

"Start from the beginning," Eames suggests, with the tone of a person that uses a suggestion as an invitation to impending violence if the words aren't to their satisfaction.

"Mal was a thief," Cobb says, "but she dabbled in forgery. Not to the depth as you, Eames. But enough."

Ariadne's hands clench uneasily in the jersey fabric of the top she's wearing, stretching it needlessly, a random tic from her high school days. She's never been a comfortable social creature, and it feels like she's standing on the edge of a cliff, like any moment the whole floor might crack and break beneath them. Her imagination is immense, it always has been, but there's no way she can imagine this conversation working without Eames pushing into Cobb's personal space, without blood being spilled before the end of the day.

Until Arthur gets up from the laptop, and heads over to them, his hands in the sweatpants pockets and a shy expression on his face that Ariadne's never seen from him before. "When they found me," Arthur says, and his voice is low and clear, like a bell, and _warmer_ somehow. A friendlier tone. A less business-like tone, "and I insisted on dreamsharing with them, we created _Arthur_."

The tension leaves Cobb's body a little, like he's much more relieved now Arthur's standing there. Like Eames is less likely to try to knock his block off with Arthur in the way.

Ariadne glances across at Eames, and Eames sinks against the nearest table. Cobb's right.

"It was Mal's idea," Arthur explains. "A personality I could _forge_ as it were, so I could safely dream without bringing Fantasia into an extraction." He looks at Ariadne, and fails a little at meeting her gaze.

"Bringing Fantasia in?" Ariadne still can't make her voice be steady. She thinks she must sound delirious. She wonders if she has a fever, and then hates herself for even thinking selfishly, because Arthur doesn't exist and _Arthur's right there_ and Cobb didn't think it was a big deal and wow, Ariadne's really got an amazing track record of crushing on all the worst guys possible.

If Ariadne's crush on Cobb hadn't died on its own after a few months of him squinting and getting squashed by imaginary structures, it would have died today. Crashed and _burned_.

"I was like Amelia," Arthur says, and looks down. He swallows, hard, and then looks at Ariadne right in the eyes. "I was... lost."

 _We've done this before,_ Arthur said. Ariadne swallows, starting to understand.

Arthur shrugs sadly at her, and crosses to sit on the table Cobb's leaning against. "My mom couldn't cope- she _tried_ , she tried her _best_ \- but she always messed with the wrong guys. So she put me somewhere where she didn't have to bother with me."

"They put you into a dreamden."

Yusuf's voice is gentle for the left-field conclusion. Ariadne looks at him. She's not the only one. It's a huge leap in logic. Yusuf's face creases, and he swallows, looking at Arthur. Arthur looks at him almost thankfully, like he hadn't really wanted to say it.

"Okay," Eames says, and his voice is completely unsteady, like he's worried he's lost his mind, "I may be shooting more idiots than just Cobb today."

Yusuf's voice might have been gentle, but his face is telling a different story.

"How did you come to that conclusion?" Cobb asks, bravely ignoring Eames.

Yusuf looks down, picks up something from the table and puts it back down, and then looks at Cobb directly, his head tilted. "It's something I was researching, back when I lived in Dubai and my work was more... legal. About the long-term effects of somnacin on children."

Ariadne stares at Yusuf, and thinks about the legal application of dreamsharing that Arthur has told her about - the Government using it for simulated wars, with soldiers stabbing and killing each other and testing what level of pain people could withstand. That had been terrible enough in itself. Testing it on _children..._

Not just one child. Children _plural_. Ariadne had just been unhappy about Arthur until now, and now her queasiness multiplies as she thinks about all the children in Amelia and Arthur's position, and all the things the PASIV allows people to do.  
Sometimes Ariadne is uncomfortable with their illegal use of the PASIV, dropping into people's subconscious, messing with their heads in the most intimate and invasive way possible. But compared to all the things she's now imagining the Government doing with the technology, their work seems mild. Inconsequential.

It's no wonder Yusuf seems happier in his backstreet shop creating chemicals, and strictly monitoring his own dreamden.

"I hated my work," Yusuf says. "But my Government had reports of these children being put into dreamdens. They were cheaper than childminding services and kept the children out of the way while the parents went to work. It was much like how ten years ago some parents would just shove their children in front of the TV. Most of the serious cases of somnacin addiction we discovered happened to these children. No matter how much we tried, nothing would help. The victims _had_ to keep dreaming or suffer very painful side effects. Or death. I lost my job trying to help them because mostly, the Government were using the kids as guinea pigs. They didn't care about survival rates, just _results_." Yusuf shifts a little under their gaze. "In my own dreamden, I'm more careful at my application of somnacin, and I _never_ take a child under more than once. My compound counters the long-term effects to the best of my ability. When the dreamers choose to leave the shared dream I provide them with, they do not _need_ somnacin."

"If I don't get a somnacin dose, my brain starts to eat itself," Arthur explains. "Charming, right? The PASIV is the safest way to ensure that a survivable level of the compound stays in my blood stream."

"That's terrible," Ariadne breathes. "And not just the somnacin dependency. And it's all terrible, and Cobb - I'm still pissed at you, that's not going to change _any_ time soon, mister. But... Seriously, a _dreamden_?"

The idea of it hurts. Ariadne's always felt a bit queasy at the concept of parents who just shoved their kids in front of TVs, letting Disney movies and cartoons be virtual babysitters, and she's always had to swallow uncomfortably when adverts on TV for childrens' charities come up, talking about abandoned children. The idea of putting your own child into dreamshare... It's like some weird, mishmash horrible hybrid of the most monstrous things you could do to a kid in one concept.

The breadth of what was possible in the dream world collides sharply with the hundred visceral images she has of Arthur in her head; him shooting at projections with brutal efficiency, him getting sliced apart in different ways, and burned, and in one extraction which went particularly wrong, getting impaled on a signpost. Was he stoic as part of his personality? Or had he just spent years - _potentially lifetimes_ \- in a shared dream where worse things happened?

Or was anything as bad as finally waking up and finding out the real world was hard and horrible and the furthest from Fantasia as one could possibly be. A world where your mother didn't love you enough to stop the horror, and a world where people were harsh and you couldn't _imagine_ new friends when things got bad. A world where because of what had been done to you, you had to submerge yourself in a new personality?

Everything's too raw. She owes it to Arthur to know, to open her eyes to it all, because world change can't happen without knowledge and Ariadne never dreams small. She has Robin Hood-style delusions of grandeur, using the PASIV for the elusive 'good'; Cobb'd never go for it, but he's got to retire eventually. Sooner rather than later if Eames has anything to do with it from his current expression. Ariadne's good at looking at the big picture. But she's getting to be as good at looking at the small details, too, and right now asking about it would be too much.

"It wasn't too bad a childhood." Arthur shrugs. It's not the response Ariadne was imagining; it's much better, but it doesn't salve the ache in her chest. "There are worse places to grow up."

Ariadne struggles to say something which isn't a mangled sound of pain. She works her mouth and says something, because her childhood was sunshine and rainbows in comparison and the conflicts with her parents suddenly taste like nothing but love, so she hasn't any real excuse but selfishness, and Ariadne hates being selfish. "And then?"

Arthur shrugs. "I was there too long. The authorities got involved and couldn't wake me up—the drugs were too strong. One of the cops knew of the Cobbs, and I met Mal for the first time when she was pretending to be Dame Eyola, making me strong enough to make the right wish to come home. So I got out of there, and readjusted. Wrote a book about it to get it out of my brain, to accept it was a dream, and then when I started to dream, Mal helped me create a forgery so we would be safe in the dreamscape. She and Dom always were on the experimental edges of dreamsharing."

Ariadne's mouth feels dry, because she remembers asking _Who would want to be stuck in a dream for 10 years?_ and Yusuf had patiently responded, _It depends on the dream_.

"Wait, wait, wait, _Dame Eyola,_ and you _wrote a book_ -" Eames actually sits down hard on the table, making it wobble. It looks like the shock of whatever he's just eureka'd himself into has at least softened a little of his _violence-to-Cobb_ bender. "Shitting fuck _no_." He looks at Arthur, wide-eyed and almost _reverent_.

"Shitting fuck yes," Arthur says, with a straight face that wavers a moment later and breaks out into another smile. "Fan of the book, ain'tcha?"

Eames looks appalled. "It was my favorite book at uni. Bloody fucking _Arthur_ , you're Bastian Bux?"

Arthur hurries over, yanks the laptop out of the power lead and taps something into Google, bringing up a cover of the book _The Neverending Story_. Ariadne smiles at it automatically. It's identical to the copy Amelia has.

This scan of the cover includes the whole dust jacket, including a pixelated picture of the author. Ariadne thinks of the times she's seen that photo in her own copy, back in storage at her mom and dad's house, and she feels a rush of shame. How had she never realized it was Arthur? It's distinctive, the crease of his eyes, the pink curve of a rare smile, the slope of his chin. Eames moves closer and she can tell he's seen it too.

"There were always rumors on the dreamsharing grapevine that it was written by someone who had lived it in the PASIV," Eames says, shaking his head. "Christ, fuck." The color drains from his face. "The number of times you've let me dig your lack of _imagination._ "

"On the contrary, I've appreciated it," Arthur says. "It's a comfort to know one of the best forgers in the community is taken in by it."

"So I'm a moose," Eames says, but he's shaking his head and not looking too mad.

Maybe he's just worn out. Ariadne empathises. Ariadne feels... calmer now. Because Arthur might be smiling now, and wearing clothes she's never pictured him in—loose sweatpants, functional t-shirt, his hair drying in curls at the nape of his neck—and he's not who she thought he was at all, but... He's still the same, too, in an odd way. That means there's hope, that this isn't the world shaken up forever. They had Arthur before and they will again. Ariadne can breathe.

"The cutest moose in the forest," Arthur says solemnly.

Eames wrinkles his nose. "It was easier to tell your sarcasm in the forge," he mutters, his voice sounding exactly like the time Ariadne tricked him into a discussion about _Twilight_ and he talked for ten minutes about how to make skin sparkle in the sunlight before realising _he'd spent ten minutes earnestly talking about sparkling vampires_.

"Arthur was supposed to be temporary, but the dependency..." Cobb shrugs. "It's had side effects."

"To the tune of me being _him_ almost permanently," Arthur says, shuddering a little and running a hand through his hair again, pulling his fingers back and looking at them dispiritedly. "Dom, my left brain identity is a stick-in-the-mud."

"The personality splintered down the middle of the brain," Yusuf says, like he's thinking out loud, "yes, yes I see where that might have happened."

Ariadne thinks about it. Thinking about something inconsequential is easier than thinking about the hate curling in her stomach. "So should we call you Bastian while you're here?"

Arthur actually _winces_. "Mal thought it would be better. She thought it would make adjusting to the forge easier if I ever had to let it go, like I have to now. But..." He looks at the computer screen blankly, and minimises the cover rather than closing it. "It's easier in Fantasia to differentiate. Mal started calling me Arthur in there, the closer I got to leaving. So Bastian is my Fantasia name, and Seb's _my_ name. And Arthur is. well. _Him_."

"Using a name like a totem," Eames says. "She was a _hell_ of a woman." He doesn't look at Cobb, but it's close enough to a 'sorry _I nearly shot you'_ , so Cobb nods stoically, taking the win.

"If Amelia's anywhere near as bad as me, we might have to use AURYN," Arthur says, twisting to look up at Cobb, a frown on his face.

"Or convince her she already has," Cobb says. "And she's forgotten some of the important things, the good things she's left behind."

"It's risky, and depends on how badly she's lost," Arthur says. "But if we use Level 1 to find her, Level 2 as Fantasia... and no sedative. We can't risk losing her in limbo. If she took Fantasia down to limbo we'd never find her."

"Agreed. AURYN will keep her safe, and in a lethal situation if we prioritise Ariadne, to keep the landscape, and Eames, who can forge into new characters as and when, then I'll take point in any dangerous situations," Cobb says.

"We should keep Falcor the luckdragon close," Ariadne suggests, excitedly. "Just in case."

"Oh my god, you're a Neverending Story geek _too_ ," Arthur says, with an exaggerated groan.

"I just can't believe we're lounging around _seriously discussing Fantasia,_ " Eames says. "I might as well just superglue my totem to the palm of my hand the number of times I keep checking it." He shakes his head a little. "So we do this job, you step through a door and we get Arthur back?"

He sounds a little unsure at the end, and all the mirth and incredulity Ariadne's been feeling settle in the base of her stomach. Or maybe it's the hamburger playing havoc again. Either way, Ariadne can feel her fingernails digging into her palms, because the answer suddenly means everything.

Arthur - or should that be Sebastian - Ariadne's having trouble knowing what to call him now.

 _Seb's_ face falls, and he looks so much like Arthur all of a sudden - downturned frown, anger in the eyes - that the answer suddenly becomes _urgent_ on top of its importance.

Cobb shuffles and looks at Seb's face, but not into his eyes. "You'll have to become him again, Seb. The somnacin dependency-"

"Fucking _hell_ , Dom - you've got the best chemist in the world. It's been fifteen _years_. Don't try and tell me there's no cure." Seb's chin juts mulishly. Arthur wouldn't be seen _dead_ looking so stupid - it makes his face look almost ugly. Ariadne hadn't thought it possible. "If I have it my way, Arthur's gone. I won't let that personality smother me again. I _won't._ "

Seb storms off over to the laptop, and although he pushes up the screen to continue watching his cartoon; Ariadne can tell he's not really watching it, because when it comes to an end he just lets the viewing window go blank and he doesn't click on anything else.

"It's funny he's said that," Eames says, almost conversationally.

"Hm?" Cobb says, glancing at Eames and then tensing, like he'd forgotten Eames had had a gun in his face ten minutes ago. Ariadne frowns and makes a mental note to discuss somnacin's effect on memory because _seriously_ , if this is Cobb's brain unaffected by any external thing, then Cobb's nowhere near as decent as Ariadne had been assuming.

"Because if Arthur doesn't come back, you've just made the best enemy in the world." Eames pats Cobb on his shoulder, and storms off, slamming the warehouse door so loudly that the building shakes with it.

Ariadne doesn't know what to think at all.

She wraps her arms around herself and when she looks back, Cobb and Yusuf are steadfastly not talking about it, even though Yusuf keeps glancing at Cobb like there's something he wants to say. She wonders what Eames is thinking, because he's always thinking _something_. She can't wrap her head around the idea of what's happened to Arthur on her own, or Seb, or the fact that Seb's just dropped the concept of Arthur _never coming back_ into all of their heads.

 _I don't want to die_ is what Arthur had said before walking through the door, and Ariadne had been so relieved to see him alive, but it wasn't physical death he meant at all. It was the death of his _personality_ , and wasn't that just as much dying as being shot?

She needs air. She needs Eames. The universe is nice for once when she stumbles out of the warehouse and finds Eames leaning against the outer wall, smoking.

Ariadne thinks about going back inside for her coat. It's chilly out here. But stepping through that door had been bad enough once - she'd had the fleeting thought that maybe Arthur was still somehow in that threshold and she could catch him and stuff him back in his body. Her flights of fancy weren't diminishing with PASIV use. Maybe being able to have pure creation is like a drug that just keeps unlocking more and more, with no limits.

Eames doesn't smoke much, only when he's stressed, and Ariadne doesn't blame him. She almost wants to bum a cigarette from him, but it's a habit she doesn't want to pick up. The somnacin is one addictive habit too far.

She's angry, and confused, but she can feel the bristling energy just rolling off Eames. Going into the conversation angry will only feed into his anger, and they'll bounce off each other exponentially.

To keep the conversation vaguely rational, Ariadne's going to need to go in gently.

"I'm right in thinking this is odd and not a normal day at the dreamsharing office, right?"

It's usually a good angle, abusing her rookie status as an excuse to probe. It's a flimsy replacement for the real question ("How are you?"), couched in terms that are less likely to bring up Eames' automatic defences, but it's the best one Ariadne's got. She hasn't got long left to use the newbie angle, so she's glad she can get _some_ use out of it still.

"It's like high school all over again, love." Eames exhales a cloud of smoke up into the air, clouding his face a little. When the smoke clears, his eyes are hooded, and his face is blank. It's like he's taking what he has left of Arthur and holding it in his own face. Forging a little of the Arthur they know to keep him safe.

"High school was irritating and confusing," Ariadne says. "It rarely blurred the philosophical line of life and death for me."

Eames grins; Ariadne's eyes briefly trace the uneven mountain range of his lower teeth. There's glee in his grin, but no warmth. _Death mask,_ she thinks, involuntarily. He doesn't look down at her, but Ariadne's not expecting him to. She doesn't know where she would look if he did. "The American education system has its flaws compared to its superior British cousin."

"I forgot Britain was still in the Dark Ages and supported gladiatorialfights to the death," Ariadne says, mirroring his pose against the wall and looking out into the same skyline. "I'll make sure not to repeat my mistake."

Eames makes a small sound of amusement. Normally he'd grace her deadpan style of humor with a guffaw. His genuine amusement would be a delight to hear, but this isn't that sound. It's a million miles away from that sound and Ariadne knows exactly how it feels to only be able to manage a quarter of the positive emotion you want to feel.

She doesn't want to feel anything positive. Arthur isn't _real_. Ariadne's not entirely sure she'll ever feel anything positive again.

"My dad," Eames says, after an unexpectedly short pause. "When I was in comprehensive school - that's British for high school, darling."

"I'm American," Ariadne says, mock-haughtily. "Not a Philistine."  
"You don't have the right coloring," Eames informs her. He's still not looking at her. This is probably one of his stories that's less fabrication than usual. Ariadne's getting better at noticing. Eames is a born storyteller, but that often means he embellishes the details. When he's telling a really rampant lie, he's all body and eye contact. He takes you by the elbows and looks deeply into your eyes and is so very, very earnest. But the times when he's telling stories where maybe, even if just for a minute, Eames actually got hurt - those are the times he can't make eye contact at all. Even like now, when he's joking with her.

"So what happened when you were a sophomore at your comprehensive school?" Ariadne asks, tongue firmly in cheek.

Eames does flash her a look at that. She catches a glimpse of raised eyebrows, a semi-quirk of a genuine smile, and she looks away so as to not make him be the one to move first.

"When I was a _Sixth Former_ ," Eames says, "my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's."

Ariadne tries to swallow her rapid exhale of breath, because she knows Eames doesn't appreciate anyone making a deal of anything that hurts him. He spares her a brief, thankful glance. "I'm-" she starts.

"If the next work in your sentence is _sorry_ , I'm not beyond getting Cobb to swap you for a younger, prettier model. You're 24 now, Ariadne, don't you hear the biological clock ticking?"

Ariadne kicks him in the shins on the principle of it. She doesn't hold back. Eames winces and screws up his eyebrows, before shaking his head a little and extinguishing his cigarette against the wall. He toys with the butt for a while, smearing ash across his fingers.

"My childhood was better than being in a dreamden," Eames says, "Wasn't yours?"

"Absolutely," Ariadne says, reverently. "That's one of the things I can't wrap my head around."

"Along with the crazy _Fantasia_ layout."

"Obviously."

"I guess... this is just like coming home from school. And seeing this man with my father's face, with no _idea_ what he's ever done." Eames shakes himself a little. "A man who knew my name and nothing else. And I think-"

"What?"

Eames does look down at her then. His expression is still blank, unreadable. Ariadne tilts her face up to look at him, because she has to. Because her attention is the only thing she can offer. It feels like if she stretches out her fingers to try and touch him, he might melt between her fingers. "You don't want to listen to an old man ramble."

Ariadne rolls her eyes, making a show and dance of it. "I listen to Cobb," she says, because Eames doesn't listen to straight protests. Eames responds to between-the-lines better than on-the-nose.

"Touché."

"I try."

"Well. It's that philosophical line of life and death, isn't it?" Eames' mouth presses into a line. Pure Arthur. "What are you supposed to prefer - the monster that loves you, or a stranger who doesn't hurt you but doesn't even know you to like you?"

"I don't think there's any _supposing_ about it," Ariadne says, slowly, but she feels dizzy. She feels like she's on the verge of figuring something out, something which might _hurt_ to figure out. The ground feels less solid beneath her feet. It's all fancy. The sky and the ground are static and it's Ariadne that's wavering inside her own mind. "You have to feel what you feel."

" _Feelings_ ," Eames says, with conviction. "Bollocks to that concept. Let's go get drunk on firewhiskey and catch us some luckdragons."

His whimsy is infectious and Ariadne smiles because she wants to, powering through the guilt with it the best she can.

"Are you coming in?"

The energy of smiling through Eames' faked bravado (and it's faked, because not even Eames is that whimsical; whimsy is only for grad students and Cobb when he's drunk and morose, in the world according to Eames) makes her miss how quickly Eames has moved from the wall and around her.

She wrinkles her nose a little. "I might stay out in the cold a while longer."

Eames nods, like he understands. He throws her a loose salute instead of saying anything more, and bows his head to duck through the door. Like he's scared of hitting his head against the frame, even though it's a clear foot above his head when he's standing in heels - it happens, because it's _Eames_ ; he has to practice his female walking because it's not every day he has to walk naturally in five inch high shoes, so it happens occasionally, and always to everyone's mirth. Eames is good natured when he's the butt of a joke.

Ariadne has to stay outside to swallow and swallow for a while, gulping down air and trying to stop herself from throwing up, because Eames' words are an uneasy accompaniment to her thoughts, and she is sure she's missing something.

 _What's better,_ Eames had basically asked, _a monster who loves you or a stranger who can't hurt you because they don't remember how_.

Her heart contracts and Ariadne can't help but clasp her own throat with her hands hard enough to hurt, deep enough for her to feel her heartbeat pulsing against the press of her fingertips. She wants to cry at the idea of it, because this, this is something she clearly should have seen. Something maybe she didn't want to see. Arthur and Eames have always bickered at each other, have done as long as she's known them, surely if they were involved there would be more than hurtful exchanges and smug contests to outdo each other?

 _The monster who loves you_ , Ariadne thinks, and it's not her heartache to feel, but she feels it regardless. She wasn't listening to their conversations in the past with an unbiased ear. She was listening as a girl who didn't want to grow up, who wanted this fairytale life of stealing ideas and imagining impossibilities into being to never change. Deciphering exchanges into a form that could mean this new life _changing_ \- of course it would never be a priority.

But now she has an inkling of what has been going on, their words mean something else. Each insult becomes a checkpoint, an endearment disguised in a cloud. _I hate you -_ which anyone else would read between the lines of their words - means something else entirely.

Something which makes the concept of Arthur being gone forever even more unbearable.

 _The monster who loves you,_ Ariadne thinks, and her heart splits clean in two.

* * *

It takes four full and long days for Ariadne to get the concept of the maps in her head.

Every day is a day too long. She makes Cobb and Yusuf stay in the warehouse at all times she's there with Seb, because she's uncomfortable and because asking Eames to be her bodyguard is one hit too hard.

Yusuf thankfully takes on the job of looking after Seb out of 'office hours', taking him shopping for clothes more in his comfort zone after he deliberately wrecks Arthur's pristine jogging clothes, and putting him up in a hotel and catering to his every whim. It's overly zealous. Ariadne remembers the look of guilt on Yusuf's face when Seb talked about his dreamden experience, and tries not to think about what he might have done that would elicit this sort of diligent compensation.

She tries not to think about how appalled Arthur will be when he realizes what Seb's been making him wear, because it makes her want to smile and Ariadne thinks she needs to be angry. She always works best when she's angry and Arthur deserves her best.

Eames spends most of the four days out of the way, consistently drunk, and answering their texts with one word replies. Ariadne covers for him, mumbling about him researching Amelia's life. Cobb accepts it much too quickly for him to believe the excuse.

He can't stay away forever, and his breath is clear when he comes in on the fifth day.

Ariadne isn't surprised. Eames isn't the kind of person to give anyone up without a fight.

As they set the PASIV up for the trial run, Seb's eyes linger too much on the small vials of somnacin for Ariadne's calm. She quickly and quietly shuts Seb down when he tries to flirt with her.

It's not the first time. Over the last few days he hasn't exactly been subtle. Ariadne's been slowly, cautiously trying to get to know Seb. To her horror, she's found herself smiling a few times at his clumsy jokes, and on a few occasions nodding along with his ideas.

She could like Seb, if he wasn't stealing Arthur away from them. She misses Arthur fiercely, much more than she'd thought she ever would. By necessity, then, Seb is the person wrongly inhabiting Arthur's face and Arthur's body, and Seb is the one who has stolen Arthur away from them.

Cobb is an idiot, but Seb is the enemy.

She's trying very hard not to think about how really, isn't it sort of the other way around? And why does Arthur deserve to live more than Seb?

No, that's not how she's going to think. She shuts down Seb's flirting because apparently Seb is a hundred and eighty degrees different from Arthur and that means he's flirty and it also somehow means he's _straight_. Ariadne couldn't respond to it either way, because even if she likes the Seb personality, how would it morally work? It would be like _using_ Arthur without his consent.

Besides, she could never do that to Eames, now she knows there's honor to defend on that count.

Seb takes Ariadne shooting him down with a lopsided grin that looks all wrong on Arthur's solemn face and, unfortunately, he's pretty loud about it. Ariadne pretends not to see how tense Eames' face is the whole time.

Cobb's one hundred percent oblivious to the whole exchange, of course. He nudges her when she's untangling the wires. "Amazing, isn't it? That Seb is totally different to Arthur in every way but his face?"

Ariadne watches the tension ratchet up in Eames' shoulders, and she narrows her eyes. "Amazing isn't the word I'd choose," she says, not bothering to keep her voice low.

Cobb frowns. "Maybe not a complete 180 - he seems to like you in both personalities. Some things cross."

"Some things _definitely_ don't," Seb mutters, looking at Eames for the first time since Eames had come back in. Ariadne stares at him in surprise, and Seb looks at her. There's a cruel edge to his smile that no one else is looking to see. "Pretty but not my type, if you get my drift."

Cobb looks amused at that, like he thinks he's talking about Ariadne. "Somebody's been shot down," he says with a grin. "We should get this party started."

"Party," Eames mutters. "More like a bloody spectacle."

Cobb squints across at Eames. "I thought you'd be happier with this formation. Arthur doesn't even like you. Seb's on the opposite side of the spectrum and he has imagination. The chances are higher that Seb would actually _like_ you."

Maybe it's Seb, smirking unpleasantly from the other side of the PASIV. Or maybe it's Cobb sounding so _genuine_ about his cluelessness. Or maybe it's the way that Cobb is right - except not in the way he thinks he is.

Seb is one hundred and eighty degrees different from Arthur, and it's clear to Ariadne right in this moment - Seb hates Eames.

 _There should actually be comfort in that somewhere,_ Ariadne thinks, although she will never say it.

Eames is bristling like someone's threatened to bodily harm one of the team, and he straightens from where he's pulling up one of the lawn chairs and looks across at Cobb, coolly and with hate clearly on his face. "Sometimes, Cobb, you're a real son of a bitch."

"Uh," Cobb says, helpfully. He looks between his team like Ariadne looked at the PASIV the first time - like there was knowledge to be had, something new and amazing to learn, but it was an eternity beyond her grasp. "Seb, you remember now - let Bastian take control in the dream. We need Fantasia, not Resident Evil."

Seb rolls his eyes. "I know, I know. Let warm fuzzy boy take over or me, Arthur and Bastian all die of brain rot. I've read the manual, dude."

"We're just creating Fantasia in level one this time. In the job itself it'll be on level 2. So please, all of you remember to call him Bastian from the off. If we call him Seb-"

" _Him_ ," Seb sniffs, "Am I the cat's illegitimate bastard nephew? I have a name. And seeing as I don't get to hang around much, I'd _like_ not to be a _him_. And if I'm letting Bastian run around, you'd better as _hell_ give me some dreaming time as me."

"On the job you'll have level one to yourself. I already promised you that a thousand times," Cobb says.

"Excuse me for not believing your promises on face value-" Seb starts.

"Let's just do this rehearsal run, okay?" Ariadne says, quickly. She's always the one making the peace. She almost wonders how this team worked without her; Arthur told her the other week that while they _did_ , their successful heist percentage had increased a little. Not enough to conclusively prove Ariadne's a lucky charm or considerable asset, but enough to _intimate_ that this may be the case.

At the time, Ariadne had been almost offended at Arthur's earnest statistics.

Now she'd do almost anything to get them back.

Eames is scowling so hard, the scowl a particular brand of his own this time, that Ariadne thinks he'll be scowling in the dream.

She has to make it a quick assumption so her mind doesn't linger on it, because her mind _has_ to be full of the twisting nature of Fantasia geography. Seb's been teaching her, and it's almost insane - except for the logic of it. It's like a _choose your own adventure;_ limited permutations considering which route they decide to go. It's smart. If they let Amelia take the lead, she'll believe the dream so much better than if forced into a path.

Entering the real world has to be her free choice.

They appear in the middle of the Grassy Sea. Ariadne makes a noise of surprise that she's managed to get it as spot on in the dream as it is in her head, and the colors grow brighter as she twists around in the sea of long, waving grass. She can see the glinting spires of the Ivory Tower far off in the distance, and Horok far in the distance in another direction, light sparking off its thousand windows, and the forests, and Ariadne thinks that might even be the Wandering Mountain to the North, just for a moment, but then it's gone.

The skies are blue, bluer than even in San Jose, and the clouds seem higher even than the sky, wispy like when Ariadne's painting and runs out of paint on her brush, leaving the oddest streaks of color on the page. There's a gentle breeze, but it's nothing too cold, and she can hear nothing but a pleased hum from Seb.

 _No,_ her brain interjects, _from Bastian. This is home to him._

"There's nothing here," Eames says, and Ariadne turns to him with a frown. He's the only one who hasn't altered the residual self-image of the clothes they were wearing in the waking world, and he looks out of place, in the world, in amongst them.

Cobb and she are dressed similar, in soft brown leather clothes that wouldn't look out of place in _Pocahontas_ ; Ariadne's been affected by Arthur always mimicking Cobb's clothes when they dream. It's just embedded in her subconscious that a Point Person mimics the lead Extractor.

Yusuf's not there. He's going to be staying in Level 1 of the dream when they do the real job, or at least, that's his excuse. He's been hanging out with Seb steadfastly, keeping an eye on him on behalf of the whole team, taking the lion's share of babysitting duty. Maybe it's his form of grieving Arthur - looking after what remains - which makes Ariadne all kinds of sad at the thought, because he's not gone, he _isn't._ There's nothing else she can do but try not to think about it.

Seb - Bastian - is in some version of what Bastian wears in the second movie - a loose hoodie and some jeans. He doesn't look out of place, but maybe Ariadne's automatically coloring the landscape so he fits in, or his subconscious is doing that because Fantasia is _his_ world. She really needs to remember to call him Bastian when here. It's best to stick to Mal's rules. _Much more likely for us to get Arthur back,_ Ariadne thinks, and automatically thinks of Eames.

Eames, who is still wearing an ill fitting suit, a pink shirt and white loafers, in the middle of the most fantastical place they've ever dreamed up. He is still frowning, but it's less. He sounds much less angry too, when he speaks. "It's much quieter than I ever imagined Fantasia to be."

There's nothing so much as a hint on his face, but Ariadne deciphers the small dig in Bastian's direction (even as she's getting dizzy at how easy it is to think of him with a different name) and quietly agrees with him, because the landscape is her only job and he's right. They're nearly waist deep in bristling, soft grass and there's nothing. No creatures, no bugs, none of the Purple Buffalo that fill Atreyu's homeland and so should be somewhere in sight because they're in the _middle_ of where Atreyu is from in the book.

"Duh," Bastian says, and he's definitely Bastian now. Where Seb's jittery, Bastian is calm; this is his world, and his comfort in it is horrifyingly clear. He's relaxed, like the idea of tension has never even occurred to him. This is someone 100% comfortable with his surroundings, someone who feels entirely _safe_.

Someone who is the furthest away from being Arthur is possible.

Someone who still has Arthur's face.

Ariadne's stomach clenches. "Please explain it to the rest of us who _aren't_ blessed with your particular range of experiences?"

Bastian looks a little apologetic.

"Careful, love," Eames says, "you're starting to sound like a real Point Man."

"Point Person," Ariadne snaps, annoyed. "So?" She's harsher than she means to be, because Eames is right, and that was Arthur's brand of condescension, and maybe that's what happens in the dreamsharing world. Because it's not like there's some manual to follow, what with it being so completely illegal and most of the times borderline-immoral, so people have to do it by learning on the job or shadowing others. Dreamsharing leaves you brain-deep in the people you work with, and so learning from them, it's probably inevitable some of their tics get passed on along with the knowledge. Maybe the same tics have been passed down from extractor to extractor.

Ariadne's in love with the idea of it, all of a sudden. She can picture it. Three hundred years in the future, and dreamshares are still running under the radar (because going into people's heads, that'll never be happily accepted, there's too many boundaries that can be crossed, too many morals that are shady enough in reality that could be compromised in a heartbeat; dreams are the last safe territory some people have, and no one would want their privacy routinely invaded so intimately) and a Point Person with Arthur's frown is holding a gun to a crowd of projections, and an Extractor with Cobb's squint is staring at someone in disbelief, and a Forger with Eames' swagger is sashaying across the floor.

Eames gives her his usual soft, pitying look - like he knows she's off in LaLa land. Like maybe that's the trait she'll be passing on to those architects in the future.

Ariadne's practiced enough in dreamshare by now that her flights of fancy don't affect the rigidity of the dreamworld. Still, if they want to move around Fantasia she's still going to have to focus. She thinks through the major regions of Fantasia in her head again, and keeps throwing the same challenging look at Eames.

He just grins at her, his trademark shit-eating grin, and glances at Bastian with his most practised expression of disdain.

"Fantasia doesn't exist anywhere but my head," Bastian says, looking away from them. "And it's not the location. We could have made this look like anything we wanted."

" _Now_ you say," Ariadne says, thinking of the hours she's spent cramming this landscape into her head.

Bastian gives her a look which Ariadne might describe as fondness, except it looks so wrong on Arthur's face that she has to fight the urge to flinch; Arthur doesn't show fondness. His emotion is expressed in the small moments of approval, the _lack_ of condescension; so much of Arthur's life is made up of the spaces, of things he doesn't say.

It stands to reason that Seb and Bastian both have no problem showing their emotion. And yet again Ariadne _hurts_ at how easily it is to think of Arthur as all these different people so easily.

"We need the landscape for Amelia's sake," Bastian says, rolling his eyes and not making any secret of his distaste for having to explain all of this. Arthur, on the other hand, _likes_ it when people ask him to explain stuff they're not getting the hang of. At the very least he's pleased (although he never shows it) if you ask him once. Five questions later about the same thing and he's planning how to create a paradox in the real world with your body parts.

"Why does Amelia need it if she's never been here?"

"Fantasia has become part of the world's identity. There are so many people in the world who know now what Fantasia is 'supposed' to look like." There are heavy air quotes in Bastian's tone. "The films, the books, the comics - they all depict Fantasia as the way it was for the Atreyu storyline. It doesn't matter that Fantasia is made up of limitless wishes and it can look however you want it to. No one will ever know the thousand permutations of Fantasia I walked. I picked this one for the book because it had the moral twist, the identity dilemma the publishers were looking for. But what was identical in each version of Fantasia was the characters. They were my friends. And _they_ were what Fantasia was to me. And they're what I need to wish into this world to _make_ it Fantasia."

Bastian reaches beneath his hoodie and pulls out an object on a chain. Ariadne feels an odd thrill, a tingle in her palms. She knows that object even before her brain identifies what it is, and she understands the reason for the landscape to mimic the film's landscape now - her recognition of AURYN is immediate, undeniable. If it didn't look like it did in the film, her subconscious wouldn't expect it and the dream would fall apart.

"Close your eyes," Bastian says. "All of you. Right now."

No one does. Ariadne looks sheepish when Bastian turns his peeved look in her direction.

"This is how it works," Bastian says. "I could wish up a gun and shoot you all out of here. Then I'd never have to leave."

"And you'd never be back, ever," Cobb says, and his voice is so hard that Ariadne starts in surprise. "I'd make sure of it, Bastian. I can take you so deep in a dream, so far into your own nightmares that you'd choose to be Arthur again so fast your head would spin. And I would _ensure_ Arthur never let go of his control ever again. Even if it meant goddamned shooting him to do it."

"You'd do that to your _friend_?"

"We all would," Eames says, and the unevenness of his voice is nothing compared to the deadly seriousness of his eyes, boring into Bastian's face like he doesn't even care it's Arthur's face too. "For Arthur. So watch where you step, fantasy boy."

Bastian narrows his eyes, and his fingers clench around AURYN involuntarily.

Ariadne can't help but think, _oh, that's what Eames' anger towards Arthur would be like if he didn't..._ The thought is too raw to finish, and she swallows back the tears that well in her eyes. Even in a dream, those emotional reactions can feel so real.

"C'mon," Cobb says, reluctantly. "We don't have too long scheduled down here. Best to close your eyes." He takes the lead, screwing up his eyes and he looks so ridiculous that Ariadne can't help the snort of laughter the comes out. He snaps one eye open to glare balefully at her, and Ariadne looks contrite and makes a song and dance of shutting her eyes.

The rest must follow suit, because a few moments later Bastian says, "You can open your eyes now."

Ariadne does. She's sort of expecting the world to fall away from her, because she always used to mix up _The Neverending Story_ with _Labyrinth_ , because her friends would watch those two films together, and Arthur loves paradoxes, and the Escher sequence of _Labyrinth_ is more the fantasy world she _can_ picture him in - but the world is intact when she opens her eyes and she breathes an audible sigh of relief. She freezes, because normally she'd be mocked to high heaven, but the others are distracted and Ariadne can't blame them.

Because as soon as she lifts her head to the landscape around them, all concrete thought is lost.

Ariadne actually has to pinch herself to keep her brain locked fully on the complicated layout, because she could so easily lose herself in this moment. Fantasia is beyond expectation, beyond even _her_ imagination. It's so easy to believe in this moment that Bastian's just a boy with Arthur's face, because this is a thousand times more than Ariadne would have ever guessed was lurking in that brain of his; she suddenly understands how Arthur fits in that brain alongside everything else. Because if this is Bastian's imagination at full play, it's enough imagination for a whole person to fit quite comfortably.

The detail is breathtaking, exquisite. Later, Ariadne will lie in bed and remember what it felt like to trail her hand through the rough fronds of the Grassy Sea and feel the small creatures nose at her fingers, and she'll remember the cry of the Purple Buffalo speeding across the plains, and the laugh of the Tiny that wandered up to greet them.

For now it washes over her like a jumble of sound and brilliance and light, and she wants to laugh at it all and she wants to lie on her back in the grass and just stare at how alive this world is, and she can understand for one horrifying moment what it must have been like for Arthur to be stuck here, to feel like it was almost forever, to feel like it didn't matter if it was...

And then to trust Dom and Mal, and to be brought into the real world, squinting and frail, and to realize the world was dark and grey and it _hurt_. And yet Arthur was so committed to the idea of reality, surely that couldn't be just him, it had to be a spark buried deep in the _whole_ of who Seb and Bastian and Arthur were.

Reality had to be better than Fantasia somehow, somehow, and that's the only thought that reins her attention back to the others.

She's desperate then to see Fantasia through _their_ eyes, and she's giddy as she looks at them, thrilling to see the wonder reflected on their faces. Cobb's smiling softly, like Fantasia's an old friend. Bastian looks so very relaxed, loose around the shoulders, but smug; it's like he's finally getting to show off his home that he loves so very much to the people that mean the most to him, and in this moment it doesn't matter that it's supposed to only exist in dreams, because it's real to _him_ and isn't that where all the moral implications of dreamsharing run into stony ground?

Eames has his poker face on, and Ariadne wants to nudge him, to wake him up to the brilliance, but she doesn't have to - she catches Bastian clenching AURYN again, and he winks at her, and closes his eyes, and Ariadne looks up in the sky, feeling it in the pull of her gut that something amazing is about to happen.

It does. Ariadne yells, purest joy, because she can't help it, it's brilliant, it's beyond amazing - because there's Falcor the luckdragon and he is _everything_ that the book described and more, and he's more _real_ than that puppet in the movie, and he's glorious, flying above them, low enough that Ariadne thinks she could lift her hand up and tangle her fingers in his snowy white fur. Falcor swoops past them, and the luckdragon is laughing, a deep belly laugh that's contagious, and when Ariadne looks across to Eames, desperate to find someone like her, a fan of the book, to connect to, he has tears in his eyes that Ariadne just smiles at, her throat suddenly aching with feeling, because Falcor is the embodiment of all her childhood dreams and wishes, and he's real, he's real, and Ariadne thinks about the kinds of dreams people would want to immerse themselves in for thirty years, and this has to be one of them, if you didn't have people in the real world to miss.

Ariadne's too locked to the real world - she's been craving her mama's lasagne since the first visit to Amelia's house, and she has plans with her friends in Paris after this job is done - but if she didn't... _Mal was wrong,_ Ariadne thinks, for perhaps the hundredth time, _it's not just a totem you need to fix yourself to the real world, or a name - it's people, and you have to have something to return for._ She knows now the instant she doesn't have either is the instant she has to walk away from dreaming forever.

The ache of that thought isn't enough to dissuade the infectious joy and delight from seeing Falcor. Ariadne's bristling with it, full to the brim with it. She has no doubt in this moment that Amelia will be more than saved when they bring her here. She's not alone in her glee. The others are smiling, and Ariadne reflects the smile right on back.

"Are all the characters in the book here, or do you have to wish them here too?" Ariadne says, and maybe she's yelling, but she's fighting for control of the landscape against the insistent pull of her own joy, and controlling her volume is one ask too far.

"I wish them all in at once," Bastian says, and his voice is full of her excitement too. "I can't help it. You could go anywhere in Fantasia and find any of them. They'll be there. Engywook and Urgl, Morla, Pyornkrachzark. The Childlike Empress is in the Ivory Tower, and Xayide in Horok over there; Ygramul you'd find in the land of the Dead Mountains, fly too high and you can meet all four of the wind giants. You'd even find Gmork if you strayed too far into the Swamp of Sadness. They're as much a part of Fantasia as I am."

"And Atreyu?"

"Some of the characters were the other players in the dreamden," Bastian says, and he sounds a little sad at that.

It might be Ariadne's imagination, but Fantasia loses a little of its color. Perhaps the sun has gone behind one of those paint-streak clouds.

"So Atreyu was another player," Ariadne says.

"No," Bastian says, and flickers a mischievous look in Cobb's direction.

"Did _Cobb_ pretend to be Atreyu?" Ariadne can't help but be a little appalled, because she spent _hours_ listening to her friends regale her with florid descriptions of themselves cavorting off with Atreyu on Artax into the sunset.

"Cobb as Atreyu," Eames interrupts, even though Ariadne hadn't thought he was paying attention, "that's an image I could have lived without."

"Hey," Cobb protests, without heat. "I didn't look too bad in a lambskin waistcoat at that age-" Then he realizes what he's saying, and clamps his mouth shut, but it's too late to take it back.

Ariadne's shriek of laughter isn't one that she can put down to the mirth of Fantasia; the look on Cobb's face is immortal, and Ariadne hopes one day someone will invent a camera that will work from the dream into the real world, because there's been some classic Facebook material from Cobb over the last twelve months that Ariadne has had regrets over being unable to save.

"We've only got twenty more minutes dreamside here," Ariadne says, in lieu of an apology. "Can we try moving?"

Cobb nods, throwing her one last disgruntled look before picking a direction at random like Ariadne had asked him to before they went down. They won't know which direction Amelia will choose, so Ariadne has to be prepared for whimsical choices as well as straightforward ones.

They're going to have to practice this several times, Ariadne thinks, as they enter an area of woodland. A little further into this wood is a monastery with floating stone pillars; Ariadne remembers Eames digging Arthur's lack of imagination with a rueful shake of her head.

He technically _had_ imagination the size of a thousand planets. It just so happened that he was _inhabiting_ that imagination. Seb had tried to explain it, that it took all his energy and imagination _being_ Arthur to survive the dreams that there was little left over for Arthur to use - and that's why it was safe for Arthur to go into the dreamworld. It left him reliable and dependable - perfect for a Point Person.

Repeated exposure to the somnacin, to the dreamworld, to the _emphasis_ that Seb could _not_ be anyone but Arthur in the dream... that's what had led to the more definite split.

Ariadne has to push those thoughts out of her head again, because she can't contemplate an ending to this story that could work out well for any of them, and while she never wants to think about losing Arthur forever, it's impossible, it's _horrendous_ , it's sad that Seb and Bastian have to be boxed away for him to live. Yet again, one of Mal's actions was leaving repercussions that rippled like afterquakes through their lives.

Cobb takes the lead, changing direction randomly, and they press so deep into the woodland that the trees become a roof over them, and light filters down through the gaps in stripes, illuminating spilling dust motes in the gaps. Ariadne's always had a good sense of direction, and she adjusts mentally for each degree turn.

If the Ivory Tower is _North_ , then they're currently heading West. The trees are still silent, so they haven't wandered into Singing Tree Country. Ariadne mentally runs through the map and adjusts for this course. Travelling directly through the woodlands in a Westerly direction should lead them directly to the Silver Mountains. She's happily rewarded with a glimpse of the Glass Tower of Eribo when the trees thin for a while, a thin beautiful spire in the distance where the inhabitants captured starlight.

No matter how much Cobb twists and turns in the time they have left, they're going to end up at the Silver Mountains. With that able to fit into the back of her mind, her brain's free to think of other things. Ariadne tries to think about Arthur when he was Bastian, maybe when he was the same age of Amelia, coming up with all of this.

Her math isn't as strong as it could be (although, always better than Eames' woeful relationship with numbers) but if Bastian was kept in a level 1 dreamscape (just a dream, not a level 2 dream-within-a-dream - Arthur came up with the terminology when dreams-within-a-dream-within-a-dream threatened more likely) then...

One hour in a dream was five minutes in real life. Even if Bastian had only been kept for a year in a dreamden... That was an extra two decades.

If someone had introduced him to the concept of a dream-within-a-dream...

Ariadne shudders. _No wonder Arthur sometimes seems like an old man,_ she thinks, and nearly stumbles.

She catches herself, although not quick enough to avoid Eames noticing and smirking at her over his shoulder. This part of the woodland is pretty wild underfoot, and Ariadne feels embarrassed, because as the dreamer she's the one to blame for filling the area with that sort of detail. It had made sense, topside, cramming the layout into her head - the nearest Fantasia inhabitants in this part of the woodland were the ones who lived in Salamander, and they spent all their time on their flaming streets, not scurrying out into the woods for the fear of setting the trees alight.

In her position as Point Person, Ariadne has enough focus to catch herself when she stumbles, but Bastian's gaze is on the sky as he walks, careless of his steps. Ariadne's been trying not to look at him much, because it's so weird to have Arthur with that look of unfettered joy on his face walking along, but as she glances in his direction, Bastian's foot connects with a twisting tree root and he's stumbling forwards much too quickly for Ariadne to help him.

Thankfully, Eames is close enough - and he automatically hurtles forward, twisting on his heels and crouching to catch Bastian before he faceplants into a particularly unpleasant looking tree. Eames' hands are on Bastian's elbows, and Eames' back is scraping the tree, and Bastian stumbles into him, momentum carrying him solidly into Eames' chest.

Eames looks down at Arthur's face, pressed so suddenly and awkwardly near his, and his expression is blank. Ariadne swallows, and it hurts, because Eames is schooling his emotions more tightly than she's ever seen him, and this has to be painful for him, to have Arthur so close and so far away.

Except, Bastian's voice is deeper than it has been when he says, "Eames," and then again, " _Eames_?" and Ariadne's heart is in her mouth, it's the only way she can describe it, because it's Arthur, oh, somehow, it's _Arthur_ , and he's come back to them and they can stop this farce. And Eames has realized too, because his eyebrows are furrowed, and his face had been entirely blank.

Eames' eyes are scraping Arthur's face like he's been _missing -_ not just his personality, but his whole _body_ gone too. Eames is looking at Arthur like he hasn't seen him for a week, even though his face has been _right there_ the whole time. Arthur - because it is Arthur, it _is_ \- makes that sound again in the back of his throat, the one he made when he was saying that Cobb didn't know what Arthur was giving up, and Ariadne knows what it means now, because it was _Eames_ Arthur was giving up, _is_ giving up, and Ariadne glances up to see if Cobb has realized.

Cobb turns around a moment later to see why they're not following him, and his eyes flicker to Arthur and Eames, and over to Ariadne, then back to Arthur and Eames for a moment. Arthur and Eames are almost _frozen_ ; Eames' hands tight on Arthur's elbows, their eyes locked on each other.

The trees around them that had been rustling gently in the wind start to quieten; a silence settles on the whole, frozen tableau as Bastian's subconscious can't populate the dream any more. His imagination is busy with something else.

Someone else.

Ariadne looks over to see Cobb, to gauge his reaction, and she catches the moment he realizes what's going on, the instant he finally, finally understands.

Ariadne doesn't know what to say. " _Arthur_ " might be what she wants to say, using his name like Mal devised, like a totem. She wants to use his name to bring him back permanently, but Arthur stepped through that door despite his feelings for Eames, despite not wanting to die, because Arthur wanted to save Amelia like Mal saved him, and Ariadne doesn't have the right to decide for him.

Cobb takes a breath, and Ariadne fights the urge to stop him, to shout out, because whatever name he chooses to say probably will decide the whole way forward. Ariadne imagines for a moment telling Amelia's parents that they're sorry, they can't help; she's much more relieved at the concept than she should be.

When he speaks, Cobb doesn't say a name. His eyes linger on the weird, half-accidental embrace between Arthur and Eames, and his voice is soft when he says, "How long?"

"Years," Arthur breathes, without tearing his gaze from Eames, and Eames, Eames who's never without a word to say, stays silent and trembles a little. Eames' mouth compresses into a line, like it's a fight to keep his emotion in check now. "Years and years."

[ ](http://darlinglileve.livejournal.com/6351.html#cutid1)

Eames manages to straighten a little, tilting them both upright, and Arthur puts a hand on Eames' cheek, his fingers curling tentatively.

"Years and years and no time at all," Arthur says, and Eames closes his eyes for a moment and lowers his head. Arthur ducks his own head, pushing his forehead against Eames, and Arthur's fingers hold Eames' face there.

Ariadne's so sure she and Cobb shouldn't be watching this. This moment is Arthur and Eames, and isn't for intruders. But there's no time for privacy, and no time for this to be taken above, not unless they throw the whole mission aside.

And while they're all thinking it, Ariadne knows one other thing for sure - Arthur won't let them throw Amelia's chance away, not now.

"If this is all it took to get you to swoon into my arms in front of others, I'd have touched you with an audience well before now," Eames says, and his voice is light like he's teasing, but his face spells out the tension and strain clearer than any words could.

"Don't be gauche," Arthur interrupts automatically, but there's no lightness in it, not like there usually is.

"Pet-" Eames starts, but Arthur shakes his head.

"You have to say my name," Arthur whispers, and Eames flinches like he's hurt. "I couldn't live with myself if we gave up on Amelia now." His voice breaks a little when he adds, "Mal never gave up on me."

"I know." There's a terrible smile on Eames' face now, a terrible taut mockery of a smile as he breathes, "Oh, my love, I know."

Ariadne's breath catches at the endearment. From the way Arthur's eyes crease, it's not an unusual sentiment for them.

"I won't let you go without a fight, you know," Eames says, louder, more fiercely. "I _won't_."

Arthur's smile mirrors Eames, no amusement in it at all, but it's so much more _sad_ on his face than terrible. "I know," Arthur says, "I'd expect nothing less." His voice is strong when he demands, again, " _Say my name_."

Eames nods, and his gaze drops, and he swallows. He pulls his face away from Arthur's and he carefully doesn't look at him as he tenses and says, clear and strong, "Bastian."

That's it. Nothing else. Just _Bastian_ and Arthur changes. His face goes slack, and then there's almost fury in his eyes for a moment, and then it's pure confusion. Eames' hands are still lingering on his elbows, and Bastian stumbles back as if Eames' touch hurts him.

"Get off me," Bastian says, his eyes wide as he stares at Eames like he's the most deadly thing on the planet, and if Arthur doesn't come back after all of _this_ , he probably will be. Bastian yanks AURYN out from his tunic again, and this time he holds it out like a weapon. His eyes are wild as he looks between the three of them.

The sounds of Fantasia start to crowd back in, but instead of the gentle, slow curve of sound that came in a crescendo up from nothing previously, all the sounds of Fantasia crash together like a wave, rolling over the top of them like an almost physical blow. Ariadne struggles to stay on her feet, and she looks at Bastian, wild-eyed and nervous. Ariadne thought _Seb_ was the one who was 180 degrees different from Arthur, but this is Arthur without an ounce of control at all, this is _Bastian_ , through and through, and Arthur holds his emotions tightly and Bastian is _terrified_.

"Keep him away from me," Bastian says, his voice pitching up, and his eyes wide with the terror. " _Keep away from me._ "

He turns, and starts to run through the undergrowth. Ariadne watches, and looks at Cobb to follow his lead, and she freezes. Cobb's expression is curiosity and concern, and he's making no move to follow him, but that's not what causes her to freeze.

What causes her to freeze is what's coming up _behind_ Cobb. Something Ariadne can identify without even thinking about it, because it's something that gave her nightmares as a kid for hours on end.

She turns on her heels, eyes wide with horror, but it's no use.

The Nothing is everywhere.

For something _called_ the Nothing, it's certainly something. At first it looks like a ring of stormclouds, all coincidentally heading in their direction at the same time - but that illusion shatters quickly because of the speed of it. There's a reason it's called the Nothing, though, and Ariadne feels it down to her bones; she just feels utterly hopeless. Like there's nothing inside her, no hope, no life, no point.

Except the Nothing by nature is a terrible force and the dark, all-encompassing hurtling black cloud rushes towards them in a roar of sound and a rush of terrible, too powerful wind that knocks Ariadne's feet from the ground. She slams into the air, torn by the Nothing in every direction, and she catches a flash of Eames and Cobb being flung into opposite direction, and she screams. Her scream is ripped from her throat, and the Nothing surrounds her, thick black cloud barrelling down her throat, and she's ripped into pieces from the inside out-

-she wakes in the warehouse, gasping and grasping for her throat, blinking furiously and trying to expel the last shreds of the Nothing from her lungs even though it was all in the dream.

The warehouse seems too dark, too still, too colorless after Fantasia. She looks across as Eames and Cobb wake up. They're more graceful than her at the waking up process; Eames' jaw tightens, and Cobb blinks a couple of times. Ariadne feels ashamed of her own flailing awakening, and for the fact she clearly succumbed to the dream death before them, and then she notices something else - the empty chair.

She hurls herself out of her seat in time to see Arthur - no, she reminds herself, this is reality - she's in time to see _Seb_ hurtle out of the main door. Her arm stings where the needles whip out of her arm. The door slams shut behind him. Ariadne whirls to see Cobb rubbing his arm, and Eames slowly winding the wires back into the PASIV.

"Best go after him," Cobb says, after a moment of looking at Eames, who is steadfastly not looking at any of them. "Seb's got access to Arthur's memories, but haphazardly; he doesn't know California. The more pissed he gets, the more he refuses any information from his brain that's not to his liking. He could get lost."

"I'd help," Eames offers, and when he looks up from the PASIV his eyes are suspiciously swollen, "but I think I'd scare him away."

Ariadne nods, and even as Cobb awkwardly says, "About that..." to Eames she tunes out and runs for the door; that's not a conversation she should be listening in on.

She thinks she sees Seb's dark head in the distance, and he's heading for the carnival; he's gone when she gets there though, and Ariadne's frustrated with herself. She suspects Seb doesn't _want_ to be found.

There's blame to be placed somewhere for this whole situation, and Cobb's going to have a lot to answer for when this whole thing comes to a close, because it's his blindness to his own team that's causing a lot of the heartache at the moment. His confidence post-Inception was always going to lead to some sort of fall. Ariadne thinks it's just her own blindness when it comes to them all that's led to her denying just how big the repercussions such a fall could bring.

Ariadne aimlessly wanders around the stalls, looking for Seb, and then she stills - because Cobb's been wrong so much. Cobb told her Seb wouldn't use Arthur's memories, but what if Seb did? Seb hates everything about Arthur, so wouldn't Seb go somewhere Arthur hated? So that he could love it in vengeance?

She's rewarded a little when she goes to the burger van, and talks to the vendor. She tries to describe Arthur to him, and he squints at her, so she changes tack - she describes _Seb_ , and the attitude rings a bell - the vendor remembers that he sold him a hamburger, and advises her to give him some basic etiquette lessons when she catches up with him. Ariadne thanks the vendor, listens to her gut and goes to the beach.

Where Arthur hadn't even put a toe in the water, Seb's sitting on the sand, the water lapping over his feet. There's a half-eaten bag of cotton candy by his side, and a cardboard box balanced on his knees. She takes a deep breath and crosses the sand, sitting down next to him without looking at him. She didn't bring her coat and she's regretting it; the sun is bright but the cold air is biting on her exposed forearms. Ariadne looks down at the skin, pale and with a distinctive trail of track marks from the PASIV; she rolls her sleeves down quickly, blushing a little that she looks so much like a drug addict.

She thinks of Bastian again, shoved into a dreamden to be kept out of the way, mortally addicted to the somnacin, and she doesn't hide the pain in her face when she finally looks directly at Seb.

Seb's face is all angles. Arthur's capable of some dark expressions, but this is darkness and anger settled on his face in an even harsher way than Arthur's ever managed.

It makes it easier to realize this man with Arthur's face is not Arthur at all.

Ariadne waits for him to speak. "Hi" isn't really enough in this situation, and "let my friend come back when this job is done" is selfish and will stop Seb from talking to her in the future, and she likes to hold onto at least the _idea_ she can talk Seb into letting Arthur come back, even though it's only the most arrogant people in the world who think they can _talk_ the world into the shape they want it, who think they can change people just by _wanting_ them to change.

Seb doesn't talk, though, and the sea curls in, damp against her thighs. She's going to be soaked through by the time Seb says something. She pictures them still sitting there, an hour later, the sea up to their necks. Ariadne racks her brain for a non-threatening opener.

The hamburger seems a good start, especially when Seb's stomach growls. "You not eating that?"

"Apparently not." Seb flickers an indecipherable look at her before looking out at the sea. "Arthur's a vegetarian."

Ariadne opens her mouth to protest, can't think of a single time when she's seen Arthur eating meat, and she steals some of his cotton candy and squints at him when he looks disgusted with her. She chews it slowly. Once she swallows it, she'll have to talk again, and she's reluctant. "You're not too far different from Arthur," she says, eventually.

Seb tenses, and doesn't shift his gaze from the far off horizon. "What makes you say that?"

"You called Eames cute," Ariadne says.

"He's an ass."

"Arthur's used that word for him before too."

"Arthur doesn't mean it like I do." He grabs the bag of candy away from her reach. "The idea of him touching me-" Seb pretends to gag.

"You're just scared him touching you will bring Arthur to the surface." Ariadne's predetermination to come in kindly is difficult to remember with the water soaking through her pants, making her cold. From the corner of her eye she can see the stubborn lock of his jaw, a pulse standing out; he's angry, and he's frightened, and someone with empathy might be kind. But Ariadne's cold, and she's lost a friend, and good intentions have no power over temper. "Have you ever felt love?"

"Right, so this is the big speech where you say just because _Arthur's_ in love, that I should crumple into the corner and let him completely obliterate me." Seb turns to look at her, even as Ariadne swallows bile, because there's one thing realizing Arthur's in love with Eames and there's another thing _hearing_ it from someone else. "I hate Arthur. He's the reason I die every time Dom Cobb doesn't need me anymore. _I'm_ the personality that gets dicked over. Bastian couldn't care less."

"Bastian-" Ariadne starts, and falters, not sure what to say next.

"You don't have a _clue_." Seb flings open the hamburger box. The meal is congealing already, sticking unpleasantly to the thin cardboard, grease solidifying in unappetising chunks on its bumpy surface. Ariadne does her best not to think about that same meal and what it had done to her digestive system last week.

"So tell me."

"If this is some touchy-feely method to get me to surrender-"

"-I wouldn't be trying to understand if it was," Ariadne says. "I'd be doing my best _not_ to get to know you, so I don't run the risk of getting _attached_. And don't think I'm not a little pissed off that one of my best friends _basically doesn't exist._ "

"Well, definitely don't worry your head about befriending me," Seb says. "I don't exist either. Oh, Mal and Dom did their best to try and convince me otherwise. But I know Bastian's the _'real_ me'."

The finger quotes are tangible. He sounds extraordinarily bitter, and Ariadne stares. She'd thought Bastian was another personality, and Seb the real one; the concept of Seb being a forge too is incredible.

The reason for it sinks in, worse than the chill of the sea pulling away and than tugging around them. "Mallorie Cobb was a _real_ piece of work," Ariadne says, clearly and distinctly and meaning it with every part of her body.

"Mal was lovely," Seb corrects, and Ariadne fights the urge to vomit, because Mal's the constant in the situations where she's heard those words. _She was lovely,_ Arthur told her, in that first lesson about paradoxes. Is that honestly what he thinks? Or did Mal program it into him, somehow? Ariadne knows enough about the Cobbs to know that Mal pushed at the possibilities of dreamshare, stretched it to its limits, before its limits caused her undoing. It's not beyond her. "Bastian couldn't care less, of course, when she and Dom turned up in the dream, taking on roles Bastian had dreamed up originally as a story-in-a-story. He didn't want to leave the dream. As far as he was concerned, the dream was his life. _Years_ , he spent down there. You know the maths of the dreamscape, right?"

"Yusuf told me about the compounds and their different effects on the PASIV. With the kind of somnacin that caused your addiction, your dreamtime will have been multiplied by at least twenty times."

"So Bastian's technically, _mentally_ lived through decades." Seb peels back a layer of bread on the burger balanced on his knees, and he wrinkles his nose at the lettuce underneath. He picks up and hurls the offending mess into the sea. Ariadne twitches, because she's conscientious about rubbish - whenever possible she _recycles_ \- but giving Seb a lecture on global responsibility is probably a tangent too far.

"So... Bastian never wanted to leave Fantasia," Ariadne says, sounding out her thoughts.

"Why would he? When all the real world has is someone who cares for you so little it's easier to trap you in what could so easily be a living nightmare than look after them." Seb shoves more candy floss in his mouth and speaks around the sticky mess. "The few times Bastian was actually at home, his mom didn't want to know. So he had to learn to sneak around."

Ariadne remembers him walking toe-to-heel. Tip-toeing. Bastian had to _tiptoe_ around his own house. So his mom couldn't hear him. _Out of hearing, out of mind?_

"What kind of freaking childhood is that?" Seb asks bitterly. "Bastian would have rather _died_ in Fantasia than come into the real world. To come back to _that_."

"So Mal... worked with Bastian to create... you."

"Bastian was too soft. Too hooked on his imaginary _friends_. Mal and Dom gave him _friends_ that existed up here in the real world and made me _angry_ at the people who screwed me." Seb scrabbles for more candy floss; finding the bag empty he screws it up and flings it into the water. Ariadne sits still and mentally cries for the wildlife that might get caught up in it, but if she moves she might break this spell, and she needs to understand. If Arthur's to have any hope, she _needs_ to understand.

She can make it up to the wildlife later with a hefty percentage of the money she's still got saved up from the Fischer job. She doesn't know _what_ she's going to do about the guilt that's going to come from pushing Seb to one side to save Arthur.

There's no amount of money that can save a mortal soul.

If Ariadne acts too guiltily now, Seb won't believe she's on his side. "So Seb is... a creation too."

"Originally. I'm as much a creature of Bastian's imagination as Arthur is. Except I became real. _I'm more real,_ " he adds, hard and bitter. "I smile and I laugh, and I _enjoy_ this world. I don't let one stupid bad dentist experience scare me off from eating candy and I eat meat and I don't let anyone get close enough to screw me. Sure some bad things happened in the dreams when I was in control. I'm not as complicated as Arthur. I don't take up as much _space_ in Bastian's imagination. And I'm so locked away I can't _control_ my imagination the same way Bastian can." Seb looks concerned over that, and he jerks angrily to his feet.

Ariadne follows him up, soaking wet, trying not to look too grateful.

Seb kicks at the water, and screams at the horizon like it's entirely to blame. "I could have _learned_ how to control my imagination. Or I could have dreamed on my own. It was stupid Mal Cobb and her stupid husband, _insisting_ I be of use, that's what made Arthur, and now _everyone_ prefers him." He turns, the tide splashing around his calves, and his eyes are wild and he looks so very angry.

This is anger that Arthur's not capable of. Arthur's anger is a precise thing; vindictive, calm and quiet. Seb's anger explodes all over the place. _Seb created the Nothing,_ Ariadne realizes, her fingers clenching uselessly in the sodden fabric of her jeans. _Bastian lost control, Arthur took over, and when Eames called for Bastian to come back, Seb came back in his place, and created the Nothing to kill us all._

"Even _you_ prefer him. And Cobb. And Eames-" There's a break in Seb's voice there that just makes him angrier. "And _Bastian_. Bastian likes him best. Bastian's lived a full life and is quite happy for dull, boring Arthur to win. I get some of the imagination, but Arthur, oh, Arthur gets the _heart_ and what's so freaking special about _heart_ when _I have imagination_?" Seb thrusts his hands in his sweatpant pockets and shrugs. "And still, you would kill me too, quite happily, to get your Arthur back."

"Not happily," Ariadne says, surprising even herself. _But for Eames and Arthur, I will,_ she adds mentally, and she looks at him sadly. No, the guilt for this might eat her alive, but even that price might be worth it. Seb looks surprised, but that surprise fades from his face along with the anger.

"Not that it matters. Bastian won't let me in the dream. Neither will Arthur. I'm stuck on the outside, looking in on something I _have_ to do because otherwise the somnacin will eat my brain and sometimes-"

"Sometimes you wish it would."

"Yes. Sometimes I'd rather crash out and take the three of us out in a burn of glory. One final, permanent death with no opportunity of it happening again and again, whenever Dom Cobb thinks it's appropriate."

"Okay," Ariadne says.

"Defending him is hi- _What_?"

"I said okay," Ariadne says, shrugging. "That's your opinion. You're a person as much as Arthur's technically a person. If Bastian doesn't want to be in control of his body, that's fine. It's between you and Arthur. But what about Amelia?"

"What _about_ Amelia?"

"She never asked for this. Just like _you_ never asked for this. But the difference is... _you_ can decide to do something about that." Ariadne tilts her head and keeps eye contact with Seb. Arthur once told her eye contact makes him feel a little shifty. Ariadne hadn't believed him, because she'd seen him maintain eye contact with _hundreds_ of hordes of marauding projections, but she hopes it's true and she hopes Seb feels it.

Seb shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his calm clearly damaged. "So what am I supposed to do?"

"You're going to have to go back to the warehouse." Ariadne shrugs. "You're not strong enough to kill yourself or you'd have done it already; the warehouse is your best chance of a somnacin hit and Yusuf's already told me how painful it would be to die of somnacin-withdrawal."

He hasn't. It's a bluff. Arthur would know in a heartbeat. But if Ariadne didn't know it before, she knows it now; Seb's not Arthur. Arthur would never even _consider_ killing himself unless it was to help someone else.

Like stepping through that door to save Amelia.

"And then? Do the job and get wiped out, probably permanently now your Forger's gone and gotten attached to that left-brain bore Bastian prefers? No thanks." Seb turns, and it's like it's only now he's realized where they're stood - a good distance from the boulevard, knee deep in water, the sun disappearing behind a raft of buildings in the distance.

"No," Ariadne says. "We do the job, and then you _fight_. Bastian won't choose you if you run away now. If you think you're equal to Arthur, then man up and show us. Don't bleat into your salt-water tears and cry about how you're _so misunderstood_."

Seb's eyes flash dangerously and Ariadne knows she's walking on fragile ground. But she would do more for Arthur and beyond. "And you'll make a case for me to Bastian?"

That wasn't what Ariadne was expecting. She falters as her brain stumbles over the idea. "Well, in the event, of course, well-"

"That's what I thought." Seb huffs, and starts to pick his way back to the shore. "Bastian trusts your opinion. Of course he does. Bastian's got full access to his heart, and I have none, and Arthur has some- that's how it works. And Arthur likes you. So Bastian likes you. And I can't like _anyone_. The bias is palpable, no?"  
"I promise I will make you a fair case," Ariadne says. "I promise. Search the memories rattling around in that brain of yours. When have I _ever_ broken a promise?"

It's clever, because Ariadne's never promised Arthur anything. She hopes like hell that Arthur or Bastian are in there somewhere, controlling the memories as best as possible, because Seb intimated that he didn't always have access to his memories and that _had_ to be because Bastian or Arthur were holding them back. _Hold back the fact that I've never made a promise,_ Ariadne thinks, silently willing Arthur to do it, hating herself for it at the same time. _And just let him know when I've been good to you. With no betrayal over broken promises to find, he'll assume I've fulfilled them all_.

The moment stretches on for so long that Ariadne's already burning with the guilt of it all. It must show on her face. It _has_ to. And Seb'll run, killing Arthur in the process, all because she wasn't good enough, she didn't say the right thing, and-

"Never," Seb says, and he looks back out into the horizon one last time before turning back to the shore. "I guess we'd better go back."

"You go ahead."

Seb's forehead creases. "You trust me not to run?"

"I know we'd find you if you did," Ariadne says. "I've promised to make a case to Bastian on your behalf _if you help Amelia_. If you don't help us, I swear to god, I'll find you. And I won't have any compunction in giving you to Cobb. You might not have access to Bastian's heart, Seb. It doesn't give you _any_ right not to have a heart of your own."

Seb looks so young then that Ariadne feels bad for being so harsh, and he swallows and ducks his head and offers her such a restrained nod that it could almost be Arthur she's stood with in the muted light of dusk, as sea water rushes around their legs. He turns and walks away, in the direction of the warehouse, and Ariadne's knees almost collapse underneath her. She waits until his dark head is far enough in the distance, and she splashes to dry land, crouching down by the railings and pressing her face into her knees.

Her face is awash with the scent of the beach, the saltwater tang bright at the back of her throat even though she's not swallowed any of the sea, and she wants to cry, but all that comes out of her throat is a thin, reedy cry. Her hands falter and clamp around the iron bars, the rust scraping her palms, and she rocks a little, because this is too much for her, this is _too much_. How can she even grieve the possibility of losing someone, someone walking around with her best friend's _face_ , and how can she even be thinking of killing Seb, who's just as real, it's not his fault he's heartless, and how can she even be thinking of championing Seb to Bastian, when Eames and Arthur's hearts are part of that equation as much as anything else?

One of the vendors, mid-way through packing up his stall, comes over to check on her. The brief moment of decent human contact is enough for her to stretch to her feet. She mutters something about a dead friend, and there's such kindness in the stranger's face that Ariadne almost cries again.

Embarrassed, she thanks the man and turns, blindly walking back to the warehouse as quickly as she can, hoping Seb gets there first.

He does. He's way over in one corner of the warehouse, drying off with a ratty towel Arthur wouldn't be seen dead using when Ariadne gets into the warehouse. Unfortunately, Cobb and Eames haven't finished airing their issues as Ariadne finds out when she's drying off in the corner as best as she can with a nicer towel from one of Arthur's crates (Arthur prepares for _everything_ ) because voices carry really well in the warehouse. Usually it's a boon (because they're all pretty lazy and like to shout at each other when they need information rather than trundling over and _asking politely_ ) but it's a curse too, when trying to say something private or something secret.

Except, Ariadne wonders if Cobb held back for a reason. If maybe he's too scared of saying something flammable in case Eames blows up, so Cobb has witnesses to the inevitable incidence of violence that might occur, or if maybe Cobb or Eames thinks it's better if there's no secrets between the team. She thinks it might be the latter. Despite all of them having trouble with those tricky things known as emotions, and being clear about them, they all know how tricky their work is and they all want to give Amelia her best chance. And if that means airing out uncomfortable truths and awkward secrets, rather than them lingering under the surface of the dream, ready to upset the status quo at any time...

Well, it's probably the right thing to do.

It doesn't make it easy in the slightest.

Ariadne bows her head and buries herself in the laptop, keeping it out of Seb's scowling reach (she's had enough of bright, cheery cartoon theme tunes for a lifetime in the last few days) and pretends that she's not listening.

Eames and Cobb are halfway through their awkward conversation; at least, that's the impression Ariadne gets. Cobb's very good at asking _why didn't you tell me_ in a thousand permutations, even though the answer tends to be _it's none of your business_. Besides, Eames and Cobb aren't deep conversationalists at the best of times.

This period of time could not even remotely be described as the best of times.

"You're always fighting," Cobb says, over a piece of equipment he's working on. Yusuf's very brave, Ariadne thinks, considering the number of pieces of his chemistry gear he's had to order again over the week. She understands why people have heavy conversations over another task. It's easier to speak from the heart when you're not looking someone in the eye, and if you're focusing on a sensitive piece of machinery, you can pretend you're not clawing your heart out.

Denial's practically a job requirement in their field, after all. Ariadne understands completely; it doesn't stop her from feeling bad for Yusuf's equipment.

"We disagree," Eames says, conversationally. Cobb must have meant _you and Arthur are always fighting_. Ariadne has never seen it as _fighting_. She'd always seen Arthur and Eames' relationship as kids in a playground, pigtail pulling and ridiculous insults and over-the-top misunderstandings. She guesses that she's not actually that far wrong - Eames and Arthur have trouble expressing their feelings. It makes sense. They're both overcompensating - Arthur with his specificity, Eames with his swagger and over-confidence. The bickering is just because they don't have the language to say what they mean. Is Cobb really so blind to that?

Ariadne risks a look in their direction. Cobb's looking down at Eames, a look of disbelief on his face that does clearly say he knew it wasn't _proper_ arguing, but like Ariadne, he didn't know what it really meant. Eames isn't looking at Cobb, and thankfully isn't looking in Ariadne's direction so he doesn't see her peering curiously at them. Eames' fingers curl, like he's looking for something to put in them - a cigarette, perhaps, because of course he's still stressed beyond belief.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Cobb asks, and it can't be the first time, because he sounds tired and worn out, on the edge of tension, on the edge of giving up. "I wouldn't- You have to know, I wouldn't have let him keep this from you if I'd known- I'm not _that_ much of a bastard."

"Sometimes you are."

The strain on Cobb's face pulls the colour from his face, shade by shade. He's probably thinking of Mal. "I like to think I'm getting better," he says, slowly, like the syllables are difficult to form in his mouth. "Why didn't you tell me?" he repeats.

When Eames does finally reply after a long moment, his voice is quiet, and strained. Like he really doesn't want to say it, but he's saying it regardless, because it needs to be said, but it's going to be something that's hard to hear. "There was nothing to tell." Eames does look up at Cobb then, and Ariadne peeks up again just in time to see his expression and he's smiling, but there's so much loathing in his face that Ariadne's stomach jumps as if she'd eaten Seb's disgusting hamburger instead of watching it float away. "Not every story is yours, Cobb," Eames adds, every syllable formed, precise and clipped.

Eames sounds terribly _sad_. Cobb flinches as if the words _are_ sad, when really they're just _true;_ although, Ariadne thinks softly, the two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. There's just too many sad truths included in this job.

"I've never said-" Cobb starts, but Eames gives him this flat look as Ariadne gives up all pretense that she's not watching avidly, and Cobb sags. He looks tense and tired. "I'm sorry," Cobb offers instead, and Eames offers back a strained, sad smile.

"Me too." Eames' smile loses a fraction of the sadness, obviously to appease Cobb a little, and Cobb mirrors the smile for a moment. "Besides," Eames adds, in that rushed tone he uses to pacify people, "There's really nothing much to tell. You know how fond Arthur is of his merry chases."

"Yeah," Cobb says, and his smile slides all the way to fond even if his eyes still hold a hint of sadness and strain. "That's pure Arthur. Never take a shortcut if you can go the long, _proper_ way around."

"Definitely pure Arthur," Eames agrees in an equally jovial tone. "Hold back, stay upright, do things the right way. Making everything into a chase so he doesn't have to face his quarry full on, condescending to the extreme, and spending time on ensuring I know exactly how much of a fool I am."

Cobb's face falls. "Eames-" he says, stricken, like Eames' words are a blow; and why not, because that's the tool a forger has at their disposal - keen, distilled observation that can be wielded like a weapon.

"Thanks for the chat," Eames says, dropping the piece of equipment he's been pretending to work on. "I've got some work to do with Ari on the layout. Best we finish this shambles of a job so we can forget the fallout, hmm, pet?" Eames starts to move towards the floor to Ariadne; she offers him a rueful twist to her mouth instead of a smile or a frown. It's the least offensive expression in her arsenal.

"Eames," Cobb says again, like he can make the name mean a million things all at once, like _I'm sorry_ and _I didn't know_ and _I had no idea-_

"I don't care," Eames says, and he looks back at Cobb, and Ariadne doesn't have to be able to see his expression to picture it in her mind. He looks unforgiving, she thinks. He looks all angles, like Arthur can never quite manage, like Seb can when he's furious. "I'll work with you this one last time, Cobb, but I'm not hanging around to pet your ego. After this job I am done with you. No amount of pep talks or team bonding days will erase the fact that you're the most selfish, pig ignorant person I've had the misfortune to work with in my entire life. Arthur might have spelled me a fool over the last few years, but he _knew_ he was deceiving me. You can't even see the damage you've done; it's overshadowed by your ego, and your overbearing morals - this is the world, and I can shape it into my own image. Well, the world is incredibly screwed if that's what you are capable of."

"I see," Cobb says, level, oddly brisk and professional. "Well, if that's your opinion-"

"It is."

"Then conclude your day's business and I'll contact you when we need you next."

"That would be much appreciated."

Ariadne's head aches a little at how fast the conversation turned from sounding amicable, to elegiac, to sharp anger in such a short time. She's so stunned that she doesn't really react properly when Eames does come over and pulls open the plans, pointing in where he wants his usual backdoors in the layout, and when he talks to her in his usual jovial manner, Ariadne would almost swear his blowout with Cobb hadn't just happened. But that's Eames' talent, becoming what he _wants_ his audience to see. It takes a lot to ruffle Eames.

Although maybe it doesn't take much; he just doesn't show anyone when he _is_ affected.

His shortcuts are simple enough, and he salutes off-centre at them as he walks out of the warehouse. The door has barely shut behind him and Seb comes over and starts to try and bitch about Eames. Ariadne cuts him off. She's not in the mood. Seb sulks, as he inevitably does when Ariadne starts to ignore him, and eventually Yusuf carts him off to the hotel they're keeping Seb in so he doesn't mess up Arthur's stuff just to spite him. They owe Yusuf about fifty trips to Starbucks for lumbering him with the job of babysitting Arthur's hostile alter-ego, and Ariadne thinks they've gotten off lightly.

Ariadne stays in the warehouse a little longer, so she's sure she's got Eames' backdoor routes in her head. He hardly looked at the map before putting them in but in usual Eames style, it's effortlessly easy to do, and the kind of shortcuts he's put in...

It's clever. If it works, it's _very_ clever.

Eames might have been very good at pretending his blowout with Cobb didn't happen, but while Cobb is excellent under pressure, he's not very good at ignoring conflict, so when he pushes a whole pile of Ariadne's research from one of the tables, Ariadne's not too surprised. There's excess rage and emotion coming from all of them at the moment, and for a lot of it, Ariadne knows where to place the blame.

At the man cursing and picking up Ariadne's research as if it's done him personal harm.

She walks over, not hurrying, and languidly picks up some of the pages that have fluttered loose. She's not going to hurry. Ariadne's not the eager rookie desperate to please her mentor any more. She's only been dreamsharing a year, and even if she gets super paranoid about holding _onto_ her position she does know inside herself that she's good at the tasks she's given to do.

Ariadne thinks back to the beginning of this job, and feels stupid for feeling so neurotic and paranoid. She's seen half-way decent thieves come and go on their jobs, but Cobb holds onto the good ones and uses them again, and never contacts the rubbish ones for future jobs. If Ariadne _wasn't_ good, her ass would be back in Paris so fast her head would spin.

"I'm sorry," Cobb says, when Ariadne shuffles closer to pick up some of the more recalcitrant papers that seem to want to stick to the ground.

"For what?" Ariadne asks. "Smacking my pages out of order or for practically killing Arthur?"

Cobb looks up at her, genuine pain wiping across his face, and Ariadne doesn't soften her expression. Cobb's a grown man and does not need his ego cushioning.

"I'm sorry," Ariadne says, feeling reckless, feeling the bite of Arthur's missing sarcasm slide into her cool rage. "Did you want me to lie to you? And tell you how none of this is your fault, and you couldn't have _seen_ any of this happening? And tell you Mal wasn't a _shit_ to Bastian?"

Anger hardens Cobb's gaze, and he freezes. Ariadne supposes someone weak might flinch at that expression, but she knows Cobb. He'd fly off the handle at anyone for saying what she's saying... if it wasn't completely true.

"She wasn't," Cobb starts. "She didn't-" He falters, and the lie he's trying to tell falls flat. Cobb exhales hard, looks away, and then looks at Ariadne earnestly. "We were just trying to help," he finishes, awkwardly.

Ariadne looks at him wordlessly. She still can't bring herself to be calm to him, but she can give him a chance to explain. She holds out her hands for the papers in his arms. He hands them to her, never losing eye contact, and she says, simply, "Seb told me his version of events. Tell me yours."

And Cobb, to her surprise, does.

* * *

Cobb tells her the story after they settle down on a couple of the lawnchairs. The PASIV stays locked away - sometimes words provide all the illustrative intensity a story needs.

After Mal worked her magic on Bastian, he believed completely that he was Seb. Seb wrote _The Neverending Story_ as part of his therapy, to accept that _Bastian_ was a story in his head. They tried to foster Seb out to a couple of retired dreamsharers who could monitor Seb's use of the PASIV, but they checked up on him two months later to find Seb in a coma. His foster parents had gone under with Seb, and Seb's imagination had combined with his hostility to wipe them both out, repeatedly, in increasingly cruel ways. Rather than suffer it, or find a way around it, they preferred to believe that somnacin-addiction was impossible and so they'd stopped dreaming with him at all.

Horrified, Mal rescued him, in much the manner they mean to rescue Amelia. She dreamed up a maze and found Seb at the heart of it; she told him he had been lost and that she would guide him home. But even after that, when she tried to make Seb adjust to dreamsharing safely, his imagination shot out of control. So Mal came up with the idea of Arthur so that Seb could dream on his own without others there working hard to counter his violent streak.

She told Seb that if he was Arthur in the dream, then he could have more control and lead the dream. At first, it was voluntary; Seb spent so long pretending so hard to be Arthur, _acting_ Arthur, every thought and every movement were full of _what would Arthur do_ that the pretense became easier and easier. Seb practiced being Arthur in real life so much that in the dreamscape the control was automatic, involuntary. Eventually Seb was so good at it, Dom and Mal thought Seb was ready to dream as himself.

The first time was the X-Men incident. It nearly succeeded, until the violent end, so Mal thought he was ready to try a second time. It was a disaster. Seb panicked in the dream, thinking Mal preferred Arthur. Seb loved Mal, like she was his mother; it broke his mind apart.

When Seb woke up, he didn't have to pretend to be Arthur any more.

He just _was_ Arthur.

Dom tried to let Seb "out" a couple of times after that; Arthur was reasonable enough about the rights of his original personality to try. On both occasions Seb refused to dream because of how traumatic that last dream had been, and he let Arthur come back voluntarily.

The last time was the week Mal died. Dom brought Seb back, because Seb was still supposed to be the primary identity, and in some way Dom thought of Seb as the _real_ one of them all. It felt wrong to be telling the "forged" personality about Mal.

Of course, he ran when Dom told him. He disappeared as Seb, and came back as Arthur, stiff-faced and with no memory of Mal's death - Dom had to tell his best friend that Mal had died all over again. Arthur cried, the first sign of genuine emotion Dom had seen from him, and after that brief show of weakness Arthur stepped in to support Dom so thoroughly that by the end of the two years of Arthur following him around the world, Dom had all but forgotten Arthur was ever a secondary personality.

Arthur even had his own life, a little apartment in California and a circle of his own friends. The psychological split was absolute, but Dom still had it buried deep in his subconscious that it wasn't fair.

It wasn't _fair_ for Arthur to be living only part a life, and Mal would have tried her best - had she survived limbo - to give him _more_ of a life. Arthur was reliable and professional and Dom's best friend. Dom thought _as_ his best friend it was his _duty_ to look after him, to try and give him access to his "real" self.

The Amelia Job was too much of a good opportunity to give up. With the team as stable as they were, he'd thought maybe now was the time to try and reintroduce Seb and Bastian to Arthur's life. To try and make him whole again. But with Seb refusing to exist in the Fantasia dream - Bastian creating Fantasia on his behalf - and Arthur—

* * *

Cobb breaks down at this point in the story.

Ariadne waits for him to raise his head, and she looks at his shuddering shoulders. His dialogue has made it clear he and Mal had good intentions at every step of the way, but then good intentions have always paved the way to the worst of destinations; Ariadne can't forgive him fully yet, but she's beginning to understand.

"Arthur's more real than any of them," Ariadne says, as Cobb stares at the floor, rubbing at his temples. "You have to know that."

"Now I do. Before..." Cobb shrugs helplessly. "I've spent as much time with Seb as I have with Arthur. As I have with Bastian. I was trying to... The moral argument is immense. They're all real. I just didn't know-" Cobb looks around to the door, like Eames might still be there. "I just didn't want to think about the bad parts of it, I guess."

"I talked with Seb out on the beach, earlier. He doesn't mean to give up without a fight."

"I was getting that impression."

"And one other thing." Ariadne folds her hands in her lap, awkwardly. "I know you think Mal was successful. She wasn't. Seb knows he's not the 'real' personality. He knows Bastian was first. I... got the impression he knew. He just... loved Mal enough to pretend for her." Seb didn't say that out loud, of course, but it was there, ringing in _between_ his words, heavy and certain.

Cobb looks up at that, something flashing in his eyes. It might be guilt, or an automatic inbuilt burst to defend Mal, or something - but Ariadne's still feeling too much guilt over what she's planning to do to Seb to shoulder any of his guilt or denial as well. She hurries on.

"Seb told me Bastian basically thinks of himself as an old man who's already lived his life. Bastian's quite happy for Arthur to have the body and to never come back." Cobb twitches at that - of course Cobb would find some empathy with Bastian there, because he's lived to old age in the PASIV too. "So it's just Seb we have to worry about. Seb's not had too much time... out of the box, has he?"

"Not really," Cobb says.

"It explains a lot," Ariadne says. At Cobb's frown, she explains. "The cartoons, the candy, deliberately doing things to piss Arthur off... He's still in mental puberty."

Cobb nods.

Ariadne delivers the killing blow. "To get Arthur back, we have to basically kill a teenager."

Cobb looks unsettled. He stays on the edge of the seat, curled a little over himself, a hand going unconsciously to his gut and Ariadne doesn't blame him. She feels sick.

"It doesn't stop me from wanting to push Seb away permanently," she says.

Cobb's head flings up, his eyes widening in shock. "I was thinking and failing of a way of breaking a similar version of that to you gently without you thinking any less of me than you already must, Ari."

Ariadne feels sick and unsettled, but she also feels determined. Guilty and sick, but determined."Out of the three personalities, Arthur has the best chance of a full, happy life. All three can't continue to share the same body. It'll rip him apart. Arthur's the one I want to win, and I know you feel the same too. I doubt we'll get an ounce of argument from Eames. Yusuf may have some moral issues, but we're leaving him on Level 1. I say we make a pact now. We get Arthur back. Whatever it takes."

She feels ruthless, dizzy with it, almost on the edge of dangerous. She's shot at thousands of angry projections with guns, thrown grenades into their midst, blown up buildings to take some out and killed more people in the PASIV than she's ever known in real life; _this_ decision is what makes her feel like a bad-ass. A guilty as hell bad-ass, but a bad-ass nonetheless.

Cobb doesn't hesitate in thrusting out his hand, and Ariadne has no compunctions in shaking it just as quickly. For a moment she thinks Cobb doesn't feel as guilty as she does, until she feels how moist his palms are. She looks at him with less hostility, and he smiles tightly.

He understands that this is a decision where the only two choices are frying pan or fire.

"We've got a hard day in front of us tomorrow, you should go and get some sleep," Cobb says.

"Like sleep and work are mutually exclusive in our line of business," Ariadne says. It's an old dreamsharing joke, but Cobb doesn't pull her up for the _ahem_ tired line. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Cobb nods, and hesitates like there's something else he wants to say. But then he just smiles, soft and sad, and Ariadne nods and bids him goodbye quickly, heading out of the warehouse with her head ducked down and her thoughts rumbling through her brain.

It takes everything she's got not to flinch when she walks through the door.

* * *

Eames is already in the house when Ariadne and Cobb pull up in front, Yusuf, Seb and the PASIV in the backseat. He's chatting to Amelia's mother in the kitchen over a cup of tea, in low, charming tones, and she looks much more relaxed than Ariadne remembers. Then again, that's one of Eames' gifts.

 _Chameleon_ , she thinks, _not forger._

Eames looks up at her over the top of his tea-cup like he's heard her thoughts. It's just coincidence, but it makes Ariadne sad again. Only last week she was thinking no one knew Eames, and now she knows Arthur does - only Arthur's life is as much at stake as Amelia's at this point.

"This compound's specifically designed to work with Amelia's medication," Yusuf is telling Amelia's mother as Ariadne slides closer to her. Ariadne flashes her as reassuring a smile as she can manage. "I've worked with many brain-damaged patients in Mombasa on the same drugs. It's specifically designed to leave the body within fifteen minutes, which is perfect for our purposes. If we need to get her out earlier we can use a kick-" Her mother looks a little startled. "No violence. The technical name is a hypnic jerk. We've briefed your husband on how to perform it."

Ariadne smothers her less reassuring smile, because it is probably best not to let Amelia's mother know that a _kick_ will basically mean tipping her very ill daughter out of the bed.

"The somnacin for this trip is an especially formulated one which just... wakes the sleeper naturally," Yusuf continues, throwing a small warning look at Ariadne. Perhaps the eviller smirk is threatening on her face despite her best efforts. "It's the safest one I have for someone on the medication that Amelia's on."

Amelia's mother's fixed smile tightens. Yusuf continues his techno-babble, and Ariadne can feel the older woman physically relax as Yusuf outlines the few steps they'll need to take to counter the very few side-effects of the compound he's brewed for this job. While the tricky steps would make anyone tense, Amelia's mother is calm - because Yusuf's words indicate no _if_. Yusuf is saying _when_.

It's a hell of a bluff - they all know the odds that even _finding_ Amelia on level one are lower than anyone likes - but Ariadne's so proud of her whole team. Even Seb's quiet and is refraining from making any of his trademark surly comments or jokes.

When they take the PASIV into Amelia's room, and see her frail nine year old body rising and falling, no one has to make much of an effort to be quiet. They're sombre and silent by virtue of the circumstances.

Seeing Amelia there just makes all the sacrifice seem almost worthwhile.

Ariadne looks around the rest of the room, looking for clues on how to further connect with Amelia in the dream. She drags her fingertips over the surface of things. Connecting to all the sensations in a dream is difficult; Ariadne finds it easier if before a job she does her best to feel and smell and listen to anything that might be pertinent. Anything to drag into the dream which might make the Mark more willing to believe the dream.

On the dresser there's photographs of her, eight years old and happy; it's hard to believe it's the same girl in the bed behind her. Ariadne's fingers linger on the contents of the shelf to the left - soft toys. There's a couple of clowns made of soft, limp fabric, rough red wool hair curling out from beneath identical stripy hats, obviously handmade from the button eyes and the coarsely stitched mouth. Ariadne pauses at them.

When she looks up, Cobb's moved to stand beside her. His eyes are soft, like his expression around James and Phillipa.

"Is this going to be a problem?" Ariadne asks, holding up one of the clowns. "Considering what our level one theme is?"

"Her father tells me she loves carnivals," Cobb says. "Show one to Eames. He might be able to forge one, be a familiar face."

Ariadne nods. Normally she'd challenge Cobb, make him stop using her as an intermediary just because he had a fight with Eames, but she's eager to keep the dream as free from conflict as possible.

After the dream is another story.

Ariadne passes the doll to Eames, who throws her the hackiest look he's given her in a while and mutters something about Cobb being a bastard which doesn't sound _entirely_ antagonistic; it reassures Ariadne that Cobb and Eames might work things out later, even if neither of them see that right now.

And if they're stubborn about it, well. None of them have a woman in their life consistently apart from her. (Phillipa's too young to count; Marie too bitter from her divorce from Miles) They're unused to defending themselves from the devious techniques and feminine wiles she has at her disposal. Ariadne's engineered her fair share of sneaky conflict resolution since signing up to Cobb's team.

Ariadne snags one of the armchairs for herself, pushing it into position around the PASIV table where Seb's showing Amelia's father how to monitor the numbers and which button to press to get them out. Ariadne's been talking him through it over the webcam constantly for the last week - Amelia's parents have been understandably nervous - but it does no harm to cover the basics. She's been on that side of it too, watching over the sleeping extractors.

The five minutes of a job feel extraordinarily long when you're stuck on the outside of them, almost as long as they do on the other side.

Amelia's mother buzzes around, offering them coffee. Seb's head jerks up involuntarily when Ariadne refuses, citing the way it would weaken her synapses. She tries to soften the grin of victory she wants to make at Arthur's memories seeping through to him. Seb's good at pretending he's fully savvy about the team and what's happened in the last couple of years; he's made enough small blunders to let Ariadne know Arthur's suppressing many of his memories.

Like when she mentioned limbo, once, and Seb didn't seem too frightened of it; yet Arthur always mentioned _limbo_ like it's the worst possible place in physical or metaphysical existence.

The memory of the coffee fight obviously unsettles Seb. He pats Amelia's father on the shoulder awkwardly, and wanders over to Amelia's bedside, looking down at her body thoughtfully. He looks so young with his hair scruffy, curling over his forehead, a loose blue hoodie hanging from the thin frame of his body. Ariadne focusses for a moment on thinking how Arthur's going to react when he wakes up like that, because if she thinks about opening her eyes and finding Seb looking back, she feels sick.

Seb picks up the book next to Amelia's bedside, and looks at it blankly. It's like he doesn't even recognise what it is. Then the corner of his mouth twitches down, a hint of an Arthur expression, and he looks at Amelia and then pulls a pen out of his pocket. Ariadne finds that curious, until she remembers Seb's actually the one that wrote the book as therapy. No one writes that much as therapy unless they enjoy writing, so it does stand to reason Seb would carry a pen to write, should the occasion occur. He bends his dark head over the cover, and scrawls something across the page.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

They all look up and to the door as Amelia's mother comes back through with a tray of water glasses - Yusuf told her to have them waiting even though it's not normally protocol, and it took Ariadne a moment to realize he was asking so that Amelia's mother felt _useful_ and not a burden or an obstacle to their work. It was kind - and yells at Seb.

Seb doesn't pause, just finishes his scrawl with an unnecessary flourish, and he turns the book around. "I wrote this," Seb says. "Ariadne tells me Amelia's a fan. I doubt any fan would object to getting the author's autograph." He turns to Amelia's mother, the back of the book and his author photo positioned helpfully next to his face. "See?" He takes the tray from her one-handed, puts it on one of the folding chairs Cobb brought in, and pushes the book into her hands. "I'm Bastian Bux. Pleased to meet you."

Ariadne gasps despite herself. Eames, who's lounging on one of the chairs, one of the clown dolls still on his knee, murmurs so only she can hear, "I think the name thing only works in the dream."

It makes sense. Seb's sudden, surprising introduction brings a flood of surprised color to Amelia's mother's face. "Oh, _oh_. How marvellous to meet you! When Mr. Cobb pitched this, I never imagined such an expert."

Seb looks inordinately pleased at her words.

"So," Eames mutters, and the enthusiasm in his voice matches Seb's expression perfectly. Ariadne's a little baffled, because this doesn't seem a moment to be pleased about. " _Someone_ has a mother complex."

It's in his 'gathering information' voice; this tidbit is something Eames is storing away in his head to use for later, just like when he realized Arthur walking toe-to-heel was wrong. Toe-to-heel is how Seb walks, after all.

Ariadne looks down at Eames' slightly bowed head, and frowns. She doesn't know how it will be useful, but she's glad it will be.

"Well, we don't have a good excuse for putting things off any longer," Cobb announces, pulling attention away from Seb and Amelia's mother. "Remember: we're taking Fantasia to Level 2 this time so don't call Seb _Bastian_ on Level 1. I'll be countering Seb's violent urges as best as I can; if he loses control the whole mission will go crazy."

"Ooh," Eames says to Ariadne, " _that's_ never happened before on one of Cobb's extractions."

Cobb—in a great show of grown-up restraint—completely ignores Eames. "Let's get this retrieval effort started."

He claps his hands. Hiding in the flurry of movement, Ariadne takes a moment to pick up the now-autographed copy of "The NeverEnding Story" from Amelia's mother to see just what Seb might have written. It's easy to swipe the book from her. She's still, almost frozen, the opposite of her husband. Amelia's father is tapping his fingers on his knees, his eyes darting around the room, at all these people around his daughter.

Her breath catches in her throat a little as she reads what Seb's written in the book. "To Amelia, May you always remember that real life always, _always_ trumps fantasies and dreams. Real life has candy and cartoons for a start. _Sebastian Balthazar Bux._ "

When Ariadne looks up from the book, Seb catches her gaze from where he's sitting as far away from Eames as possible, casually rolling up his sleeve so the cannula can be inserted. He doesn't look away from her, but his expression is less defiant than usual. Ariadne tries to smile at him, because it's a wonderful engraving for a book, but her emotions are too raw, too close to the surface. Seb can probably see the tears in her smile.

She hopes to hell he translates that to mean she's extra pleased with him, not that she's basically plotting his murder.

She hands the book to Amelia's mother, who nods at her nervously. Ariadne squeezes her hand, and moves over to her chair.

"We find Amelia, take her to Fantasia, solve the Quest, and home. Got it?"

Cobb's pre-mission briefings leave a little to be desired. Thankfully Ariadne has her own pre-PASIV routine. She clears her mind and measures her breathing, and embraces the pain of the somnacin needle.

She closes her eyes, opens her mind and thinks and thinks _Amelia_ until the dream takes her.

* * *

Dreams always take on some of the characteristic of the environment they're being dreamt in.

Amelia's room had been light, cozy, warm. There was no artificial light, but plenty of sunlight from the windows, streaming in to the pleasantly decorated room. Her bedroom was a haven of warm colors and smiling faces.

Amelia's mind must be really discolored to do _this_ to the dream.

Ariadne's transfixed by this place. It's like nothing she's ever imagined on her own. She can't even say it's her every nightmare world joined together, mismatched and haphazard; this place is more disturbingly weird than anything she's seen. The joy of dreamsharing can often be its curse; this nightmarish world they've found themselves in could only have come a little bit from everyone - albeit _mostly_ from Amelia.

Amelia's much more lost than they'd anticipated.

Ariadne tries to take in the surroundings more logically. The idea for Level One was to design it as somewhere safe, somewhere fun but not _too_ fun. Amelia's mother told them how much Amelia liked carnivals, and yet when they went, Amelia used to cling to her mom. She loved the colors and the smells and the sounds and the games, but disliked the crowds.

The idea had been simple. Create a carnival like the one near the beach, with a different layout. Take out the majority of the people. Leave a few milling around, for verisimilitude - Amelia mustn't realize it's a dream after all - so that it was the best of both worlds.

They hadn't reckoned for the state of Amelia's mind, nor the fact her subconscious might be more than a little disturbed.

The carnival looks a lot like the one Ariadne used to go to as a child, a lot more worn down than the one by the beach. They've emerged into the dream by a tilt-a-whirl. Ariadne could reach out and run a finger along the peeling paint, but this place feels absurdly real, like one of Yusuf's epic compounds which they can't use for extractions because the dream becomes one big head rush. She knows, for instance, that if she gave into usual temptation and ran her finger along the rusting metal, she'd get a splinter and her hand would hurt.

It wouldn't hurt a _whole_ lot. Real pain in dreams relied upon one being the dreamer, after all. It was why a lot of the training Arthur gave her when they went over militarization strategies involved trying your best not to let your own personal sense of style overwhelm the dream.

Unfortunately, it's a technique that even Arthur admits is hit-and-miss; he told Ariadne about a time when Cobb had to shoot him out of the dream, because Mal knew Arthur too well and used the Francis Bacon paintings to identify him as the dreamer. It's only now that Ariadne knows just _why_ Mal knows Arthur so well. Back then, Arthur had just muttered that if a Mark is militarized and you didn't know, there's every chance they've researched you too. Things slip past and mistakes happen, he told her. Dreaming's not an exact science and sometimes you just miss things.

Things like the concept that a child trapped in a nightmare might turn the dreamscape _into_ a nightmare.

The colors of this carnival are blood and dust. The daylight from Amelia's room is gone; the night blankets over them devoid of stars. There are three moons shining down on them, giving the angled edges of this nightmarish carnival the oddest lighting possible. Each booth, each stall, each game is _wrong_ somehow. The structures are slanted. The tents are moth-eaten. The nearest game Ariadne can focus on is a shooting gallery and all the stuffed toy prizes hanging along the back wall are headless. The wall below with the targets is stained with blood. Ariadne would be sick if she processed this place thoroughly.

Ariadne takes a moment to take stock of where they are. It's not her job to hold this layout in her head, and besides, she doesn't know where Amelia is. None of them do. In an ordinary extraction, they would create a safe or a vault and heist the secrets out of it.

This isn't an ordinary extraction. Because choice is such an important part of re-integrating Amelia into the real world, there are three points they've created within Level One that are Amelia-focused havens. Places which would look like sanctuary to her.

One is the treehouse, which should be to the North, near the Ferris Wheel. The Ferris Wheel in the model Cobb brought out for Yusuf to memorise looked glossy and shiny, and it even _moved_ ; this one that she can see rising up from all the game booths is rusty, stuck in position. It's smaller than she thought it would be; it looks precarious, like it might come free from the axel at any time and rampage through the dream. She can't see the tree, but she knows it's there. It's designed to be identical to the treehouse Amelia and her father built last Summer, before she started to get sick.

There's the Hall of Mirrors, a total cliché of course, but someone who might be a little fractured in the brain would gravitate to that place of distortions. It's based on a mirror maze in a museum that Amelia went to three times.

Then there's the children's play area, a Chuck E. Cheese kind, with a ball pen and slides. It's been dream-filled with Amelia's favorite toys. Ariadne's silently plumping for that one; it has a foam fort, and balls are excellent projectiles.

It's the people living in this rusty, discolored carnival that are worse than the off-base, tilted games. Amelia's projections. They look like any normal carnival goer that Ariadne's ever seen, except their eyes are missing and the sockets are bloody, and their mouths are stitched closed with red, ragged stitches. Ariadne puts her hands to her mouth even though she's never been sick in a dream. She feels a hand at the small of her back, supporting her, and she looks up gratefully to see a worried Eames looking down at her.

 _The ears are clear,_ is all she can think, the least creepy thing about the projections that she can latch onto. _Her coma's all in the mind now. People in comas can't talk and they can't see, but they can_ hear _. So that's why the ears are clear._

"Uh," Cobb says eloquently, which is probably an accurate summation of what they're all thinking. " _Right_. The clock's ticking. We've got circa fifty minutes to find her, and this layout's expanded more than we anticipated."

Ariadne looks around again, because she hadn't clocked that. Then she counts the number of bucket seats she can see in the Ferris Wheel; fourteen over the half curve of it see can see.

The Ferris Wheel isn't small - it's just far away.

 _Well,_ Ariadne thinks, much less poetical than the lyrical waxing the terror of Amelia's projections caused in her mind, _shit_.

"Okay, we split up." Cobb reaches into his pocket and throws something at Ariadne. Ariadne fumbles and looks at the object.

It's so big that it takes her a while to figure out what it is.

"A walkie talkie?" Ariadne says. "Seriously?"

Eames tosses his in his hand, looking just as displeased. He tries to push it in his jacket pocket and fails. "There are occasions, Mr. Cobb, where it's preferable to _dream a little smaller_."

Cobb flushes. Instant emotional reactions aren't always so easy to hide when they're a surprise. "They'll work the whole range of this carnival. The projections don't look entirely friendly. The Ferris Wheel's furthest - Yusuf, Seb, you take that direction. Eames, Ariadne, you're with me."

He passes them each a walkie talkie before passing the PASIV to Yusuf. Ariadne tucks hers into the top pocket of her jean jacket. She hadn't bothered dreaming new clothes - that'll be more appropriate for Fantasia. She risks a look back as they head towards the Helter Skelter, their reference point for finding the two Southern hide-outs, and for a second she forgets everything and thinks that's Arthur walking off with Yusuf.

When she looks forward again, Eames throws her a look that's almost indecipherable, except Ariadne can almost decipher it - he understands.

Ariadne looks ahead as they walk. Although at this point in the dream it's safe to look around - causing unnecessary attention is more of a danger later - she can see enough of it without adding more of these disturbing images to her head.

And there's the fact that it any dream, any of the dreamers involved can bring elements in. Considering what's going on in Seb's head, and none of them have led exactly _peaceful_ lives so far, Ariadne really doesn't want to think about the fact that coming into Amelia's head might have made it even more horrible and dangerous.

"Cobb," Eames says, like it hurts him to talk to him directly. Cobb and Ariadne turn to him and listen; someone as stubborn as Eames doesn't break an uneasy stalemate for a trivial reason. "The projections are responding to the sound of us. Might I suggest alerting the others to this fact?"

"How-" Ariadne starts.

"When the projections turn hostile," Eames says, "hold your breath and stay still."

"And they won't be able to see us," Cobb says, and then, very quickly, looking anywhere but at Eames says, "I appreciate the observation."

"I hold a grudge; I'm not an utter bastard." Eames grins his shit-faced grin. Cobb shakes his head and puts the message through the Yusuf and Seb.

"Times a-ticking," Ariadne says, in her firmest, no-nonsense Point Person voice. Eames salutes lazily and Cobb throws her an expression which might be fatherly pride or might be trapped wind.

Cobb plumps for the play area first. It makes sense - it's the most occupied path. Best to sneak quietly among the weird, blood splattered carnival projections now before they turn thirsty for flesh. Well, it's probably more likely they'll prise off random bits of the carnival and go after them, not rip the stitches from their mouths and become sightless zombies, but Ariadne's brain is justifiably - from the atmosphere - stuck on all the nightmarish things she's ever seen or imagined.

Sometimes when you start being scared you can't stop. And Amelia must be nothing but scared if she's not waking up...

"Come on," Eames says, soft by her ear, shocking her into looking up at him. "You can daydream later. Best we get this over with quickly, yeah?"

"Like a band-aid," Ariadne says. "So it hurts less."

"I'm not one hundred per cent sure that theory's applicable to this situation, pet. Sooner we're done, sooner we can go to the pub for a pint." Eames smiles at her.

He's making an effort to sound normal, like this is a run-of-the-mill extraction.

The least Ariadne can do is pretend on back.

"I sort of fancy nachos," she says.

"And cheese."

"What kind of weird-ass nachos don't come with cheese?"

"Sometimes in Britain you have to be specific," Eames says, and nearly falters at _specific_ \- it's a lightning-flash of a sadness that crosses across his face and he schools it away neatly and Ariadne wouldn't have seen it, except she's looking for it now and can't _not_ see it. "Being geographically further away from South America makes us less cogent with South American cuisine. Dreadful, really, don't you agree?"

"Terrible," Ariadne says. "But if the inverse was true - the further away you are, the better the food - Britain would be suffocating under an influx of taco-perfectionists."

"Sounds like Leeds on a good day," Eames says, and Ariadne has no clue what he's talking about, but if it's not Arthur, then it's safe.

"I'd sort of kill for a burrito right about now," a tinny voice says out of nowhere. Cobb flails about himself hilariously, and comes up with his walkie-talkie.

"You forgot to disconnect," Yusuf adds. "Not that we have a battery issue or anything here, but-"

"But?" Ariadne prompts, loudly, so her voice will carry to the walkie-talkie. A family turns to her at that, a sea of bloody eye-cavities and crudely stitched mouths, and she shuts up.

"That," Seb's voice pipes in, redundantly.

"Whispering it is," Cobb decides. "And radio silence unless necessary."

"Roger," Yusuf crackles through the walkie-talkie, and Cobb hits a button - the green light on the machine turns to red.

If walking through this night carnival had been scary before, it's worse now that Ariadne can't talk. The silence settles down around them like it's almost a physical thing. Ariadne finds herself walking on tiptoe through the sandy ground, and her blood freezes for a moment in the chill of the dream when she remembers this is how both Seb and Bastian walk.

It must have been a physical tic carried through to Seb from Bastian. From what Cobb and Seb have both told her, she knows that Bastian wasn't consistently in the dreamden. He would have been at home at some point, to experience whatever it is that made dream life preferable. He'll have been forced to walk around like this, quiet and undetectable; forced to pretend to be invisible, to not be a burden.

Ariadne can't help think back to her own childhood, to what used to make her unhappy. She comes back blank at anything concrete. She makes a mental note to Skype with her mom when she gets back to her apartment, and maybe it's time for a visit. Ariadne's been putting it off - her mother has a nose like a foxhound and can sniff secrets on Ariadne like a cat can smell even a trace of fish - but she feels selfish now for sure.

Still, they're at the play area, which is Ariadne's private best bet for Amelia's location. She has to focus on the job. Ariadne steps forward, and stops. Something is holding her back.

 _Someone_. Eames. She looks at him, eyebrows furrowing in her confusion, and he makes some sort of gesture with his fingers that Cobb - Ariadne sees as she twists her neck as far as Eames' firm, restrictive grip will allow - understands.

Fan-frigging-great. She hates it when they use their army secret hand gestures at each other. Arthur had started to teach her them, a month or so before this job - perhaps that worrying idea of them all being replaceable had affected him more than Ariadne had originally thought - but she's got a lot on her mind, and she can't remember most of them.

She recognizes one of them that Eames throws at Cobb - his index finger travels in a square. It means _window_ , but Ariadne can't see a window from the angle she's at. Cobb makes a signal in return she can't remember - a thumbs down gesture with his left hand while he's pulling his trademark Beretta out from its holster at his side. He keeps his finger away from the trigger, but Ariadne doesn't know if that's because the threat isn't real or because it's just correct firearm etiquette, she can't remember what Arthur told her. It's another mark in the column for bringing Arthur back.

Arthur's taken her down into a dream for some gun practice before, but it doesn't feel like enough. Ariadne still prefers hand-to-hand combat which she has more knowledge of; she took two years of _Ai Kido_ at college, and Cobb's trained them all in close-combat fighting over the last year. It's why her usual dream weapon of choice for close quarters is the knife she can feel in her pocket, there's another one in her left boot, and in the backpack that weighs nothing on her back (it's a dream; the laws of physics to her own possessions don't have to apply, merely to things that the Mark needs to touch) is an automatic crossbow which has a sophisticated targeting system that's impossible in real life.

There are definitely perks to the dreamsharing lifestyle.

There's downsides too. Especially when the fake danger of it all bleeds into the real world, causing things which might even be worse than death.

Cobb beckons for them both to move closer, and Ariadne moves to step in front of him, because she can see Amelia now. She's stood at the window of the play area - which is why Eames was making a window sign - and she's looking out at the carnival, her small hands clenched in the foam of the soft, child-friendly window frame. Her hair is as long and golden as the photographs, like Amelia's hair when she was healthy; it stands to reason. There's no reason that Amelia _should_ have been aware of the deterioration of her hair, even if there's deterioration in this landscape.

Ariadne moves to stand in front of Cobb, her mental reasoning being that a female Amelia would feel safest with her, but Cobb's the one holding her back this time. Ariadne scowls at him angrily, because this is not the time for any of Cobb's ideas that she's less capable because she's a _woman_ , and-

"It's not Amelia," Eames whispers, the softest breath of a whisper. He's risking the sound for clarification; Arthur would be proud. Ariadne doesn't feel like deflating, even though her pride wobbles a little. The confusion obviously shows on her face. "Look at her eyes."

Ariadne looks again, and Amelia - or the girl she thought was Amelia - isn't facing away from them as she'd originally thought. The golden hair is hanging loosely in front of her face, and in the shadows between the strands, that's where Ariadne sees what Eames and Cobb noticed before her; two blood-streaked depressions where her eyes should be, and the coarse criss-cross of crimson thread over her mouth.

"If she was Amelia," Ariadne realizes out-loud, mimicking Eames' quiet whisper, "this place would have looked like the plans."

Cobb makes a gesture which Ariadne assumes means _follow_ , and she does, staying close to Cobb's back. Ariadne flicks a glance up at the sightless girl at the window, imagining herself in her place for a second. She shivers. The vibration of it through her body makes her twitch, and she catches Eames in the corner of her eye; he's bringing up the rear of the group, now, a sawed-off clutched in his hands that hadn't been there before. He's worried and he's protecting her by staying close.

Cobb's pocket starts crackling, and he tugs out the walkie-talkie as he starts moving in the direction of the Hall of Mirrors.

"Treehouse is empty," Seb says in a hushed tone. "The projections are starting to get a bit testy."

"Noted that," Cobb says. "We're on our way to the Hall of Mirrors. Stay where you are."  
"What?" Seb starts.

"The treehouse is the most defensible position in the whole Level," Cobb says, "unless you'd rather be in the play area with a creepy ass kid and two entry points, I'd secure the treehouse."

"Trap me some more why don't you," Seb sighs. "We'll meet you here."

Ariadne doesn't know why Seb sounds so surprised. Yusuf has the PASIV and the treehouse was always going to be the best location of this dreamscape. Then she reminds herself for the millionth time: Seb isn't Arthur. Arthur would understand why Cobb gave Yusuf the PASIV to hold; he would have been the one to propose it in this situation of the dreamscape being larger than they'd thought it would be.

Her thoughts are enough to distract her from the fear of the creepy projections and their unnerving habitat, right up until the point they make it to the entrance to the Hall of Mirrors.

"I'll take point," Cobb says.

"A talent of yours," Eames mutters.

Cobb lets the slight past. Ariadne's impressed. She doesn't say it out loud. For one, there's a couple of projections over by a booth which looked like a messed up version of the drop spot game, where the red discs are tiny and the circle is way too huge for the discs to cover it, and for another, she doesn't know how to say she's impressed without sounding condescending.

Without sounding like Arthur.

"We have no idea if there are any projections inside," Cobb says. "Most mazes you can solve by touching the left wall at all times; from the skew of traditional carnival imagery here on the outside, it's best to assume the Mirrors are even more skewed than they are in real carnivals, and-"

"-there are no mirrors at all," Eames says, sounding oddly confident all of a sudden, and before Ariadne or Cobb can stop him, he shoves his weapon in a holster on his belt and walks straight into the tent before they can stop him.

Ariadne and Cobb hold a worried gaze for a moment before bolting in after him.

Eames is right.

The tent is dark apart from a single light bulb, spluttering above their heads, and empty apart from a bed in the middle of the room.

On the bed is a young woman. Her eyes are closed. She looks like she's in her early twenties. She has blonde hair, just like Amelia's would be, but it's all hacked and torn short like the woman's done it herself without the aid of a mirror.

"I'll explain later why there's no mirrors," Eames says, in a low voice, before raising his voice and saying in the kindest voice Ariadne's ever heard him use, "Amelia? Amelia, pet. My name's Mr. Eames. This is Dominic, and this is Ariadne. We're here to rescue you."

The woman on the bed opens up her eyes. Her eyes are blue, just like in Amelia's photographs. "Muh," the woman says, " _muh_."

Eames moves a little closer, showing her his wrists, a subconscious clue that he's vulnerable, showing her a weak spot. "Take your time, Amelia. I know it's been a while since you've said anything."

"Muh," the woman says, "maybe?"

"Eames," Cobb says, "what-"

"You've said it yourself," Eames says, keeping his gaze on the woman. She's too _old_ to be Amelia. "Time's relative. In the dream, in the brain, it's all the same. If _this_ is the maze her brain has trapped her in... Three moons, no sun... How do you tell the time? How do you have _any clue_ of how much time has passed?" He looks back at Cobb for a second; his expression is blank and impersonal. "Are you _sure_ you and Mal spent a lifetime in limbo, or did you just _believe_ you had? Is either answer any less valid?"

"So... Amelia thinks she's been down here what, fifteen years? And so her self image has adjusted to compensate..." Ariadne looks at the young woman, at _Amelia_ , and she's horrified all over again. "Oh, my god."

"Amelia," Eames says, "we _want_ to get you out. But it's not going to be easy."

"The _clowns_ ," Amelia says then, curling her bare toes in the blood-red coverlet on the bed, her hands reaching for the edges of the mattress and squeezing. Her blue, blue eyes are bloodshot and her crazy hair seems more appropriate every second. "We can't get past them, I try, I try-"

"Self visualisation of the illness," Cobb says, sounding actually _impressed_. Ariadne ignores him. Miles poached Cobb from the same academic environment he poached Ariadne from; Cobb gets these little academic glows on occasion from some potential use of dreamsharing which might not have been discovered before. They try to harsh his mellow when it happens - partly because it's fun, and partly because _what if_ thoughts like that without proper research ended up in Mal, and that's never a conclusion any of them want happening to him again.

"I _knew_ those clowns were going to be a bad thing," Ariadne mutters, and thinks about Pennywise the clown for a long, horrible moment. "Amelia, if you come with us, you'll be safe. Eames and Cobb have guns. I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to see a clown shot in the face."

Amelia straightens her neck, and climbs unsteadily off the bed. She's wearing a ragged version of the gown she's wearing in real life. Ariadne wonders if she knows it's a hospital gown.

"I'll cheerfully do it for either of you," Eames says, yanking out his saw-off and cocking it purely for dramatic effect. "Shall we?"

"Where going?" Amelia manages, tiptoeing over the sandy ground to stand next to Ariadne. Ariadne starts as Amelia wraps cold fingers around her right hand. Amelia smiles at her uncertainly. Ariadne tries not to flinch at the cold sensation. It makes sense. Amelia's mother must have spent _months_ at her bedside, holding Amelia's hand. The sense memory must have soaked into Amelia's subconscious. Ariadne grips on tightly in return and smiles at her.

"The Ferris Wheel," Ariadne says. "There's a treehouse there, and a box."

"A box?"

"A box that's going to save us, Amelia," Ariadne says. "A box that's going to get us all out of here."

"I've been in the treehouse," Amelia says, tilting her head and staring vacantly at the gap in the tent. "Didn't see a box."

"A boy named Seb has the box. He's waiting for us. If we stay very quiet, and run very fast, the clowns might not even find us," Ariadne says.

Amelia blinks, very quickly. She looks around nervously. "The clowns usually find me," she says, her voice even clearer now. "Quickly, quickly."

"You heard her," Ariadne says. "Let's go."

Travelling in someone else's dream is a lot like travelling in her own dreams, apart from the fact that sometimes Ariadne can fly in hers. They tend not to change too many of the laws of physics in a dream because their primary objective is to fool the dreamer for the most part into believing they're still awake. As soon as the dreamer's aware it's a dream, the dream collapses and it becomes infinitely more difficult to swipe the information from the safe or the vault or whatever other location Cobb's insisted they build the dream around.

The journey is a mismatch of details. Because they're focussed on the destination, some of the detail in the booths they pass is missing. A giant dice roll stall has four dice which each have the number five on each visible face. A popcorn stand is full of rotting popcorn, and the word _popcorn_ is heavily pixelated, like they're in a video game that hasn't fully finished loading yet. The balloons on a dart toss booth are all melded together in a giant, misshapen mass.

The Ferris Wheel is the only thing that remains fully in focus. It happens in dreams sometimes, especially when the dreamer's fixated on something. Details just start to disappear. Books start to empty. Logos vanish. Ariadne sort of understands the concept - the few times in real dreams where she's tried to go backwards, everything has changed. She wonders if it's anything like the concept of memory Arthur was talking about before he stepped through the door and became Seb.

Maybe even dreams are made up of blocks, and you can't revisit blocks you've passed through.

Ariadne's not going to mention this theory to Cobb. He might have one of his academic moments—he might start theorising again and who knows where they'd be when he got out of it.

By the time the treehouse is fully in sight, there's twenty-four minutes left in this world and the projections still aren't moving in on them properly, but they're noticing them; they're turning their blank, bloodied faces in their direction as they move.

"My treehouse," Amelia breathes when she sees it, happiness washing her face as she recognises it and starts hurrying towards it.

It's of course that very second, where Ariadne's thinking _hmm, maybe this is going to be easy after all_ when the clowns show up.

* * *

They're a distance away, almost identical to the clown dolls in Amelia's room, albeit adult-sized. Amelia, predictably for their luck, starts freaking out.

The kind of freaking out where she starts screaming so loud that all the projections turn and face them.

Timing on this level isn't even enough to stop Ariadne thinking _maybe this is going to be easy_ again, alas. It's a lesson she hasn't learned yet. If a year of dreamsharing hasn't hammered it in yet, maybe nothing ever will.

Eames clamps his hands over Amelia's mouth when it becomes clear she's not going to stop screaming on her own, and surprisingly she lets him - which reassures Ariadne once more that it isn't a male abuser that's left Amelia thinking she can't wake up from her coma, because Amelia calms down at his touch - and Ariadne pulls out her knife.

The Clowns are a little way away, but even a short distance can become no distance in a dream.

"Up the ladder," Cobb commands. "Eames, you're with me. Amelia, Ariadne, _go_. I'll hold them off if they come close."

"Shoot one in the face for me," Ariadne says. Eames grins, but there's no humour; it's his death-mask grin this time. His _oh shit, is this what's going to kill me this time?_ grin.

Ariadne moves to prod Amelia towards the ladder as they reach it, but Amelia flinches from her touch and turns her face over her shoulder for a moment. Ariadne reels back for just a second. Amelia's face is gaunter in the moonlight than inside her dark tent, and her eyes are wide and colorless this close to Ariadne, but her fear isn't all from the Clowns ambling down the dark, sandy aisle between the ramshackle, leaning booths. Her eyes would be fixed on them, and they're not - Amelia's flickering between Ariadne and the Clowns.

"Up the ladder, both of you. _Now_ ," Cobb says, louder now. Amelia nods, flickers a wary look at Ariadne again, and turns away to start climbing up the ladder.

Ariadne hangs back for just a moment, shuffling in closer to Cobb and speaking in as quiet a murmur as she can manage. "Did you see that?"

"Mother complex," Eames mutters again, just as abstractly as he did in Amelia's bedroom.

"I saw. We have more time later to decipher it." Cobb nods at her, as if to say _job well done_ for noticing it too. "I really hope I'm not going to have to shoot a clown. James'll know I've done it. He's a very judgemental toddler, you know."

"It's his eyes," Eames says. "He got them from Mal. They're very knowing eyes."

Ariadne rolls her own eyes. This, she thinks, is not the usual way extractors go about fighting for the survival of the dream. Normal extractors probably focus on the actual fight, not exchanging whimsical banter or trying to one-up each other. Normal extractors, Ariadne thinks, must be so dull. She grins at them and starts following Amelia up the ladder.

It's clever of Cobb to send Ariadne up after Amelia. Amelia pauses at the top of the ladder, obviously shocked by Seb and Yusuf being in there. Then she looks down and sees Ariadne a metre below her, and the Clowns advancing on Cobb and Eames, their curly red hair the color of blood in the triple moonlight, and obviously decides Seb and Yusuf are the lesser of two evils.

When Ariadne gets to the top of the ladder, Amelia's staring at Seb with wide-eyed wonderment. Unlike all of them, she's clearly not missed that his face matches up with the face on the back of her favorite book.

Seb, predictably, is relishing in the attention. He smiles at her, and leans in as he introduces himself properly, and scowls at Ariadne when she moves in next to him and Amelia flattens herself against the opposite wall, as far away from Ariadne as she can get.

Seb snickers. "And here you thought you girls could bond down here." He nudges her with his shoulder, a movement that Amelia tracks with her eyes. "Isn't she supposed to be a kid?"

"She is. Cradle snatching'll get you in jail so don't even think about it."

" _I'm_ probably mentally thirteen," Seb says, and he's not too far wrong if Ariadne thinks about it. She doesn't want to. There's lines enough being crossed in this job as it stands to cross any more. "She's nine. Four years isn't bad."

" _Down_ boy," Ariadne mutters, a little creeped out.

A minute later, Eames' head appears at the opening, followed by the rest of him, and then Cobb.

"The clowns are just hanging around," Cobb says, shifting his gun and training it on a target Ariadne can't see from where she is.

Eames looks around them, at Ariadne in one corner and Amelia in the other as Yusuf finishes unravelling wires from the dream's PASIV. There are small tags on the cannulas, which Ariadne can see have their names in neat Courier print. She makes a mental note to pitch Yusuf and Arthur in an organisation match when they get back. She flickers a wary look at Seb, and swallows the guilt back down.

"Amelia," Eames says, after exchanging a look with Cobb - in amongst the bantering, they must have found time to agree with Eames taking the lead on this, "A quick question before we deal with the box. Before you fell asleep, before you came here... Did you ever have any female nurses?"

"How's that important?" Cobb says. Eames throws him a _shut up_ look. Cobb stares at the ceiling, dark planks with cracks of moonlight spilling through, like he's a kid who's been caught doing something wrong.

"No," Amelia says, eyeballing Cobb oddly, crossing her arms over her stomach. "How did you know I fell asleep?"

"We're here to wake you up," Seb says.

"We're here to get rid of what it is that's stopping you from waking up," Eames corrects, a little harshly. Seb pulls a face. Eames ignores him, taking Amelia's hand and looking directly into her eyes. Ariadne's been on the receiving end of that little gesture herself - it's very difficult to disagree with Eames when he's turning on his charm. "But we have to find something first. _You_ have to find something."

"What is it?"

"That's just it," Eames says. "If I knew, I'd use the box on my own. But I don't know. I don't have a clue. Only you can find it."

"What if I can't?"

"You can," Eames says, "I know you can. And you have us here to help you. I can vouch for each and every member of my team."

" _Your team_ ," Cobb breathes, sotto voce, but quietens when Eames elbows him.

"We're all here for you."

Amelia looks worryingly at Ariadne again for a moment, but she swallows, and nods. "What do I have to do?

"Trust me," Eames says, picking up one of the cannulae. "Just sit down. You're going to find yourself somewhere weird, but don't worry, we'll be right beside you."

"Somewhere weird," Amelia says as Eames pushes the cannula into her elbow - it's not her dream, so it's not as painful as it could be. She might look like she's in her early twenties, her body the same shape as her mother's, but her voice is still a child's voice. "I'm an expert in weird. I'm sure I was somewhere even weirder than here before an hour ago. I just... can't remember."

Eames smiles at her reassuringly, and settles down next to her, Seb sitting on her other side. Ariadne waits for them to push their own needles in before following them, Cobb settling next to her. "You might feel a little sleepy. Just settle into the feeling, Amelia. We'll be right there."

"I don't feel tired at _all_ ," Amelia declares, and slumps over into sleep.

"A mild pre-sedative to give you a minute or two headstart," Yusuf says. "Sleep tight."

He might say something else after that, but the somnacin takes hold of Ariadne then, and she fills her mind with nothing but Fantasia and lets it take her away.

* * *

When Ariadne wakes, already standing in the same clothes she wore in the test run, Fantasia is quiet. They're in the Howling Woods; this is Ariadne's dream. She'll always know where they are. The sun's shining in Fantasia, but the Howling Woods are dense by the nature of what they are - thick trees that normally sing, an echoing harmonic sound nothing like any sort of music in reality. Ariadne's spent time just practising this section of the Howling Woods for hours on end; she found herself humming the discordant song of the trees in the coffee shop on the street where she's renting a small flat, and getting the oddest of looks from the other patrons.

The song doesn't belong in reality, but it belongs in the Howling Woods, and without it the place seems large and empty. It doesn't seem fully real. Ariadne looks over to see Amelia, still barefoot and in what's either a nightie or a hospital gown, and Amelia's face is blank. She's a few moments away from collapsing the dream on her own if her disbelief grows any more.

They need Fantasia. They need Bastian to wish it into place again. She edges a look over, and her heart stops a second - like it's always going to do when she sees Arthur's dark hair and the curve of Arthur's neck and Arthur's hands curled around something which he could use as a weapon (which, to be fair, in Arthur's case is pretty much anything with mass. Ariadne once saw him take out an oncoming projection with a deck of cards. Arthur didn't even break a sweat.)

She's always going to lose a beat when Arthur's not really there.

It's Bastian in control, his eyes shut, a serene expression on Arthur's face that makes him seem a thousand times older than his years - which he might very well be, relatively, in his own head. His fingers are wrapped around the AURYN. It's something which would be dangerous in Seb's hands, but quite safe in Arthur's - unless you're a projection, in which case you might find it embedded in your throat. He lifts his head up from the AURYN, opens his eyes, and when he sees her, he's smiling this odd, old smile.

Like he's saying goodbye.

Ariadne swallows hard as the proper sound of the Howling Woods settles in around them, a song with no words, with no earthly harmony, with an accompaniment of rustling leaves and creaking bark. She smiles back at Bastian, the edges strained with a hint of sadness, and she just nods at him. It's all the approval she can give him. This is Bastian's last, great adventure, and Seb might be right; Bastian might be okay with dying. It doesn't mean Ariadne has to be all right with the concept of it.

She wobbles on her feet when someone bumps into her. She smells Eames before she sees him - sensations are always just that little bit more pin-sharp when one is the dreamer - and he flashes the smallest grin at her, a moment of bonding in all the chaos. It anchors Ariadne suddenly, and Fantasia fills her head, the location fully in place for wherever Amelia wishes to go.

"So where do we go?" Amelia's voice is unsteady. She's looking around the place, her eyes wide this time with wonder not fear, and her bare feet dent the grass. The level of detail in Fantasia is incredible, and Ariadne doesn't know if it's her own brain, creating and creating, or whether Bastian's wishes add that extra layer of verisimilitude. An ounce of tangibility that make Fantasia a living creature all of her own.

"Listen," Cobb barks, soft and urgent, dragging all of their attention his way. Even Amelia is conditioned to listen to orders. "Can you hear it?"

There's a sound, gentle but terrible, cutting through the whispering, singing trees. Each tree has its own note; the sound heading towards them, echoing around like its coming from every direction, has a different note still. A different rhythm. It is strict and regimented, where the Howling Trees are syncopated.

"Cairon," Bastian murmurs to Ariadne, as the others scan through the shadowy trees. "He's always the herald. The call to adventure. He's here quickly."

"I compressed the landscape. The amount of somnacin we could add into Amelia's medication, time's an issue." Ariadne cocks her head. "Seb holding that one back on you?"

"He's not being terribly forthcoming." Bastian offers her a tired smile again. "But one thought's coming straight through."

"That I promised to champion him to you," Ariadne says. "He's got just as much of a right to live as Arthur."

"You don't believe that."

"On a moralistic level... yes. On a personal level, fuck no."

Bastian stares at her. She can't decipher the expression at all. He exhales, a noisy little huff, and his mouth presses together in an expression that's so very Arthur that Ariadne can't breathe with it. "Okay," he says eventually. "Consider your debt to Seb paid." He tilts his head, pushing his nose up into the air like he can smell something Ariadne can't. "The North," Bastian says, much louder than the soft voice he used to talk with Ariadne. Everyone looks at him, then in a Northerly direction, to where the Ivory Tower curls up in the distance, a glinting blindingly white, whimsical spire that looks like it can barely hold its own weight. "Cairon's coming from the North."

"Cairon... the centaur," Ariadne recalls, as the sound suddenly makes sense. It's hooves. Eames moves to lift his weapon, a much more in-keeping with the environment crossbow, and it's Amelia that pushes his hand down.

"Silly," she says, "Cairon's a good guy. Everyone knows that."

She whips her golden hair and hurtles to stand next to Cobb, bouncing on the balls of her bare feet in excitement, clinging girlishly onto Cobb's arm. Cobb looks at her, looking mildly perturbed. He's probably, Ariadne thinks in a combination of pique and victory, thinking this level of high-pitched excitement is what Phillipa's going to grace him with in a few years. It serves him _right_.

"Everyone knows _that,_ " Eames mimics as he sidles over to stand next to Ariadne, almost tone-perfect for the little observation time they've had with her. Ever a forger, even by accident. "I swear, she almost had your level of condescension there, Ar..."

Ariadne can see it, the instant that Eames remembers Arthur's not there anymore, that Arthur was never even really real to begin with. The cynical amusement on his face dissolves instantly. His face freezes, a pulse in his jaw indicating he's tensed every muscle, and his shoulders sag.

"Bastian," Eames amends, his voice stiff and formal. He swallows, looks at the ground, and then tilts his chin mulishly and stares Bastian in the face. Ariadne's throat feels dry, and she struggles to remain still, to hold her composure. She wants to cry, but it would be selfish. This is not her space to grieve. "I do apologise. I lost my head for a moment."

Bastian looks torn. He looks away, and then at Eames, and then says, in a soft, curious voice, like he's trying out a language he's never spoken, "It's understandable. I've never - No one's ever felt about me the way you all feel about him. It's nice to feel it, even when it's not really meant for me." Bastian moves his hand over Eames', just for a moment.

Eames flinches, and his shoulders tighten again. "I can't-" he starts. "I'm not ready for that." _I can't even really believe you're not there,_ is what his expression is saying so clearly, even if he can't elucidate it himself. _If I let you touch me, I'll know it's Bastian touching me, not Arthur. I'll know he's gone, even if it's just for now_. "Amelia needs support," he says, instead, and ambles away from them as if he's aimless, not looking for a direction.

Anything to get away from them.

Ariadne looks at the tense line of his back and tries not to feel sad. There's a bitter taste in her mouth. It might be bile, or she might have bitten the inside of her cheek. Pain's in the mind, but her mind is elsewhere.

Her mind is focussing on the fact that she's finally able to decipher Eames, a little bit. Something she wished for, only days before.

 _Be careful what you wish for,_ they say. Ariadne just wishes the world didn't want to teach her that lesson over and over again.

Still, it's difficult to stay in a bad mood when the source of the sound makes his eventual appearance. Ariadne's never had a thing for centaurs (unicorns are more her fantasy creature speed) because she's never really thought centaurs require much imagination. They're just, in her mind, a man's top half transplanted on the top of a horse. No grace. A waste of the little imagination and creativity required to think of them, in her opinion.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

Cairon's beautiful. From the ripple of his skin to where it slowly merges into dappled brown horse hide, to where his white flowing hair changes so subtly into a mane, there is nothing that isn't glorious about Cairon as he gallops towards them. His movement is better than any horse Ariadne's seen. It's almost like he's flying through the trees towards them, his body bending effortlessly through the narrow gaps, and the random sunlight splashing like ripples across his back.

He slows to a halt with no apparently difficulty right in front of Amelia. He has about three feet of height on her, and his eyes are dark and kind as he looks down at her, solemn as anything.

When he speaks, his voice is like a deep, booming bell.

"Would you be Amelia, of Huntington Way?"

"Yes, that's me." Amelia huddles back a little into Cobb, who still looks a bit perplexed that this girl - even though she looks like an adult, she still acts nine - has latched onto him. He'll just have to deal with the fact he's a dad and can't help acting like one, Ariadne thinks, even as she keeps looking up at Cairon. He's definitely imposing, but he doesn't feel like a threat.

"And Bastian! Bastian Bux! Many years has it been since you and I rode out together across the Grassy Sea. Have you come to adventure with me again? No more Greenskin boys to find, I hope. And who is this?" Cairon eyeballs Cobb expectantly.

"I guess I've grown up a little, Lord Cairon," Cobb says, pitching his voice a little higher than normal. Cobb couldn't forge, or act, at all. It was quite sad, actually, something Ariadne didn't mind telling him now and again. "Bastian and I work together now."

"Master _Atreyu_? Well, this is good company you are keeping, Amelia of Huntington Way," Cairon booms.

"Huntington Way?" Bastian murmurs.

"Where Amelia lives," Ariadne explains.

"I'm... looking for something," Amelia says. "I have to go home, but I can't until I _can_."

It's perfect nine-year-old logic if nothing else. Cairon looks at her solemnly and doesn't even laugh or ask for clarification. "Indeed," he says, "and that is why Moonchild sent me. You have a perilous journey ahead, my girl. Are you brave enough for it?"

"I'm brave enough to _try_."

Cairon smiles, but even that looks solemn on his weathered face. "The best answer. I believe your quest lies where all in Fantasia lie. A place unbeset by individuals, where answers can be found from the cosmos itself. I have heard such whispers across Fantasia of such a place, but I know not of its location."

"Then how will I find it?" Amelia sounds upset then. Cobb pats her on the shoulder comfortingly, his eyes trained on Cairon. _He doesn't even realize he's doing it, comforting her,_ Ariadne thinks. Her heart softens a little. _Cobb doesn't intend to be a bad guy. It's just his God complex... Sometimes it gets in the way. He does the right thing eventually._

The trouble being, _eventually_ may end up being too late for Arthur.

"Simple," Cairon says. "You must find someone who _does_ know. There is someone older than I who cannot wander Fantasia's breadth any more. You must go to her."  
"Morla, the Aged One," Amelia breathes. Cairon nods solemnly.

"Her first choice," Bastian mutters to Ariadne. "There's a handful of characters she might have picked." He pauses, like he's considering something. "There could be worse-"

There's another pause, and then Bastian shrugs.

"There could have been a better choice, you mean," Ariadne whispers back. Bastian just looks at her sadly, and that speaks volume enough.

"You must travel north, my sweet," Cairon intones, deep and resonant. "And you will travel where I cannot. Across the plains and through the Swamps of Sadness. You will find Morla in the exact middle. Good speed, my girl. Night will fall two hour's hence, and in the night crawls many a foul beast in these, Fantasia's most troubled time."

"We'll go immediately," Amelia says, "thank you, Cairon, _thank you."_

"I must to the South," Cairon says. "Fatespeed, Amelia of Huntington Way."

Amelia nods, and Cairon circles around them, before setting off full-tilt to the South. "We've got to go North," she says once he's gone, and moves forwards a few paces. Then she pauses, and looks across at Eames. "Um-"

Eames points in the right direction. Amelia smiles, obviously smitten with him, and she starts to run to the North, without even waiting for them.

"No one said there'd be running on this job," Ariadne says dolefully, rolling her eyes as they all start chasing after her.

"Time's an issue," Bastian parrots to her, sending her a grin. "Besides, this is a dream. Didn't you dream yourself more athletic?"

Ariadne dodges a tree and manages to throw him an impression of Cobb's favourite squint. "It doesn't matter even if I had," Ariadne says, as pompously as she can considering she's already having to haul in more oxygen than she's happy with. Her mind is already playing havoc on her body in the dream. Sometimes it's not a good thing that Yusuf's compounds make the dreams so very real. "This is my dream. _I'm_ going to be the one feeling the cramp if we run the whole way."

Bastian just grins. Seb didn't get his jerk side from _nowhere_.

Amelia's pace slows when they emerge out of the Howling Woods and onto a small section of plains land, the dregs of the Grassy Sea that curl around the perimeter of the Howling Woods. The discordant, beautiful sound of the whistling trees dies down behind them, although the empty space of the grasslands holds tightly onto the echoes. Her pace quickens after a few minutes, and Ariadne shoots an evil glare at her back until she realizes that they're nearly upon the Swamp of Sadness.

There are curls of what looks like clouds settling in along the horizon. Ariadne doesn't know the real term for them. If she was by the ocean, she'd call them sea frets. Perhaps they're swamp frets. Or just plain ground mist.

They do slow when they reach the very edge of the swamp. The mist's curling over it almost completely. There is a path, and Ariadne knows exactly where it is; it's only now that she's considering the option that Amelia might not opt for it and they might have to spend the next hour wading through waist-height mud, trying not to sink down in it and die. _Like Artax,_ Ariadne thinks, and hugs herself unconsciously, turning to look at Amelia pacing along the length. Eames, Cobb and Bastian are holding back, letting her decide the way to go.

 _See the trees,_ Ariadne thinks, _see that the trees have a couple of large stones in between them for us to get safely to Morla_.

Eames narrows his eyes at Ariadne - a _show me where the path is so I can point it out to her subtly_ \- and Ariadne points subtly with a head nod. Eames follows that direction with his eyes, nods back to show he's got it, turns to say whatever it is he's going to say to Amelia, and he freezes.

Apparently Ariadne's becoming able to translate Eames more and more every day, and she mimics his fear before turning and feeling it herself.

The thing about Fantasia is that Bastian obviously created it to be a relatively safe environment, in amongst the slightly creepy and crazed monsters that inhabit carefully designated areas (apart from Gmork, and Ariadne's not thinking about the wolf that tracked Atreyu across Fantasia, she's _not_ ) and one of the clues in his at least _overall_ design is the lack of fierce colors. Even the flame-drenched Salamander is a place to be looked at, not visited. There's no danger in Salamander's orange tones.

The rest of Fantasia is brilliant white, cool blues, bright greens, safe greys, and a hint of gold. Even Salamander is orange and yellows.

The color red doesn't exist in Fantasia.

So there's only one explanation for the red in the distance heading towards them. Ariadne glances to Amelia, checking her reaction.

Amelia makes this _keening_ sound.

Low in her throat.

Like she's been shot.

The sound makes Bastian stare at her for a moment, empathy flooding his face. He knew that sound. Ariadne knows it, instantly. Arthur's letting Bastian know _exactly_ what he was feeling to elicit such a sound himself. He's not lying down without a fight. Ariadne feels strength flood her spine at the knowledge, even though she's also feeling a strange feeling of terror at the carnival clowns heading their way.

It's probably Amelia's fear, radiating over them all.

Or maybe it's just her own fear, she rationalises, seeing the glint of something in their white hands.

Something which chillingly resembles a meat cleaver.

"Um," Ariadne says, "I know you're the man with the plans, Cobb. But could I perhaps suggest running?"

Cobb looks towards Amelia, his crossbow already slipping into his grasp as he ducks a shoulder. "Which way?"

"We could go around. But... the swamp should be more difficult for them with their feet," Amelia decides, her eyes wide. Bastian's moved closer to her for support and her fingers curl into the sleeve of his hoodie. She turns and looks through the swamp. "There, the trees. I think I see rocks."  
"Let's go," Eames says.

"Eames, you take point, I'll bring up the rear," Cobb says, sliding an arrow into place in his crossbow.

Eames' face freezes, twists a little; he forces through a nod. Ariadne throws Cobb the dirtiest look she can manage.

"What?" Cobb asks.

"I think you've already _taken point_ enough for one day," Ariadne says, and hurries to follow Bastian and Amelia onto the stepping stones in-between the trees. She hears Cobb's unhappy huff, and then focusses on following the others on the first few stones through the swamp.

She's good at her job.

_Unfortunately._

The rocks are crooked, uneven and wet, and the swamp smells _disgusting_. Ariadne slips a little, and the swamp itself is cloying and thick, thick enough for her to be able to put a hand down and retrieve her balance. The trees, spindly looking things that rise up out of the mist like forlorn, twisted, dark fingers are empty of leaves and thankfully smooth enough. Ariadne finds she almost gets into a rhythm, hopping across stones behind Bastian, and using the trees as handholds. Eames is too far ahead to see with all the mist, but she can see an odd flash of Amelia's bright, roughly chopped hair.

The darkness of the swamp settles around them quite quickly. With nothing but swamp and mist and fractured trees in every direction, it's easy to feel gloomy. Ariadne pauses to take a breath, her dream body needing it because her brain's interpreting this whole thing as real and reacting accordingly, and Cobb makes her jump when he looms out of the mist, catching them up.

She shoots another angry look at him. "You startled me."

"We should keep going. I've slowed them down for now." That response is Cobb all over; not as firmly professional as Arthur, but close enough.

Ariadne nods, and turns to move to the next stone, but she slips a little, and grabs out for the tree to steady herself. The movement twists her until she's facing back again, and that's when she hears it.

A low, scraping growl. Like the sound a dog might make, if it had too many teeth.

And she knows who it is before even having to ask Bastian, because she's said it herself twice.

Gmork, the dark wolf who tracked Atreyu across Fantasia in Seb's book, is not constrained to one location. But he is to be found, usually, in the Swamp of Sadness.

They're already deeply into the Swamp of Sadness.

"Gmork," Cobb breathes, before Ariadne has the chance to say anything, and, of course, if anyone would know Gmork it would be the person who masqueraded as Atreyu. A knife from Cobb's sleeve drops into his hand. He turns and scours the mist, squint firmly in place.

The growl echoes around them, multiplying in the moist atmosphere until Ariadne has no idea what direction Gmork's even coming in from.

When she sees, she sees one other thing: he's not alone. The two clowns are back, flanking Gmork as the large black wolf prowls out of the mist, teeth bared.

"I thought you slowed them down," Ariadne hisses, backing up a little in fear, her hand going for her own knife.

"I dropped them in the Swamp," Cobb says, "there's no way these are the same guys."

Ariadne makes a split-second decision. "Eames!"

Cobbs jaw tightens, but he doesn't protest. These are their enemies in the swamp. They need their best fighters on this. And Ariadne and Bastian don't exactly count in that category.

Eames appears, already looking concerned and with a weapon in his hand; Ariadne never calls out in panic unless it's necessary. He passes her on her stone as Amelia and Bastian appear too, curious at what's going on. Amelia's face pinches and Bastian looks sick at the sight of Gmork.

Eames settles in next to Ariadne, checking up the situation. He lowers his voice so Bastian and Cobb can't hear. "If I don't- if we don't - Keep going. And if the situation allows it-"

"I'll do my best to get him out," Ariadne whispers back. Eames holds her gaze for a moment, and he swallows hard, but he nods. The trust in that nod almost overwhelms her.

"Get them out of here, pet," Eames says, louder, brushing her shoulder with his companionably. He winks at her, but she's not fooled; his weapon's already in his grasp and he has that focused, determined look he only ever gets when the projections are about to start raising merry havoc.

 _Ah_ , Ariadne thinks. _Finding out about how he feels about Arthur was the key to being able to decipher Eames_.

"You might want to get on with that running thing," Cobb says, and tosses her his crossbow. "Just in case," he says, in a softer tone. Ariadne catches it and nods at him. She's reluctant to move, but Amelia whimpers, and the clowns step forward, seemingly having no problem with walking on the swamp itself.

Ariadne turns her focus directly on Amelia. If they don't help Amelia after all of this effort, then there's so much that will be wasted.

She focuses on the path and leaps to the next stone, a stone away from where Bastian and Amelia are both stood, their eyes trained behind Ariadne, to where Cobb and Eames are facing off against Gmork and the clowns.

Gmork's growl is an uncomfortable friction running down Ariadne's spine.

"We need to go," Ariadne says, making the leap over to their stone.

They keep staring behind her. Ariadne fights the urge, especially at the sound of metal clashing against metal.

She takes a deep breath and uses a page from Professor Miles' book. He's still her best professor in memory even though the messes he's got her into by recommending her to Cobb are beyond belief.

Professor Miles, see, doesn't like people being late to his lecture. Ariadne's been on the receiving end of his rage more than once. It's very compelling, and it's all to do with how loud and deep he can get his voice.

" _Now_!" Ariadne bellows, glaring at them.

Amelia nods and turns, starting to move back to the North. Bastian hesitates.

"Will they be fine?" he asks, his eyes darting nervously over his shoulder. From the sound of things, Ariadne _really_ doesn't want to turn around.

"Yes," Ariadne says, "but we'll be a distraction if we hold on any longer. _We_ might cause them to be hurt. Now go. Amelia's way ahead."

Bastian looks hopelessly to the left, then nods, looks at her, and turns away to follow Amelia, ducking his head and being entirely less graceful than Arthur would be in the circumstances.

Well, Arthur would be behind Ariadne, kicking ass. But moving over the stones he'd be efficient and graceful. To hold _that_ much of a different person in one head...

She turns to look, because she'd regret it forever if she didn't, and it's the worst timing in the world; she looks just in time to see Gmork throw himself at Cobb's chest and the two disappear down into the mist, and Ariadne wishes she could say it's a blur, but even from this distance, she can see blood and ribs and exposed organs.

Gmork has ripped Cobb's chest right open from the neck to the sternum.

Cobb's not coming back out of the swamp.

"Go," Eames shouts, noticing Ariadne still there, and his yelled warning is a mistake; one of the clowns grabs him from behind. Ariadne starts forwards, and Eames grits his teeth. " _Go_. Don't make Arthur's sacrifice worth nothing! Get Amelia to the Mirror!"

Ariadne nods, and forces herself to turn her back on the scene, heading off into the mists. Trusting Eames to keep them off their backs.

Bastian and Amelia's pace has slowed by the time Amelia catches up with them. Bastian takes one look at her shadowy expression and follows her mutely.

They move quicker with Ariadne's lead.

Eames was on his own against two clowns who could move _on_ the swamp. If he was gone too, back up in level one, then it's only a matter of time before the clowns reach them too.

"Where's Mr. Eames?" Amelia demands, nearly slipping from a stone in her distraction by the topic. Bastian helps her back up.

"He'll follow us," Ariadne says, trying not to show her deepening fear that she's on her own with Bastian and Amelia.

Neither of them look like they believe her.

"He's right behind us," Ariadne adds. "He wants us to keep moving."

"Fine," Amelia snaps, and turns away from Ariadne, heading back off into the mist.

Bastian waits for her. As she moves up to join him on his rock, he looks unhappy. "He'd better be okay. _Someone_ is pitching a hissy fit right now." He stalks off before Ariadne can say anything. She moves her mouth openly for a second, and follows him. The idea that Arthur was still _there_ , inside Bastian's head, is... so much worse than anything she's been picturing.

She doesn't have long to mull over it when Amelia spots something.

"Up ahead." Amelia points to a rising dark shape in the near distance, and Ariadne picks up her pace even more.

It's taller than Ariadne had in mind when going under. Ariadne never gets used to things in shared dreams never being _exactly_ the way she pictures them. Bastian's imagination is coloring things most, Ariadne thinks, but _everyone_ brings things to dreams.

Ariadne'll take random details and things being taller and crazy killer clowns - she's just thankful it's not Mallorie Cobb any more that's being added to their dreams. She hefts Cobb's crossbow up high, just in case someone's subconscious has decided that Morla should come with any additional fun. Like grenade launchers in her shell, or something.

Not that a crossbow would be any good against _that_.

"It's Tortoise Shell Mountain, isn't it?" Amelia asks Bastian in a hushed, reverent whisper.

He opens his mouth - _Arthur's mouth_ , Ariadne's brain inserts miserably - to reply, but another voice breaks in.

"Sakes _alive._ Old woman, somebody's crawling around on us!"

"Morla," Bastian says, sounding fond. He bumps Ariadne's shoulder with his own. "Look, there. In the dark part."

Ariadne squints at something on the side of the shadowy mountain rising out of the swamp that she had been assuming was a cave. As she's watching, a boulder comes out of that cave, but it's not a boulder - it's a head with giant black eyes which ripple like a pond of dark, black water.

It's the head of a turtle, balanced on a wrinkled extended neck.

It's Morla the Aged One, and she's more beautiful than Ariadne ever imagined. That's got to be Bastian's imagination doing that because hers isn't capable of this. Not Fantasia, not Cairon, not Morla.

"Oh, Bastian." The head turns, the pool eyes rippling. Her voice is made of echoes, lapping over each other. "It's been a time."

"It's been an age, my lady," Bastian calls out. "It may be the last time we meet, I fear, so I beg for your good humor."

The large head tilts to the left, as if considering the validity of Bastian's answer. "Perhaps Morla's death creeps ever forward. The sakes know their paths; it is not up to us to see the cliff edge fate has created for us."

"It's my own end that impends, good Morla. I'm older than I look, you know." Bastian laughs a little, and spreads his arms wide.

"Still a child to me," Morla says. "Be quick. Fantasia's not at rest. I long to return to my sleep and wake on a better day. Speak your business."

"It's my business, ma'am," Amelia pipes up, stepping forward. "I need an answer to a question."

"Well, child, hurry up and ask it. If our Bastian wasn't wearing the gem, we'd eat you up. Just for silence's sake," Morla barks, pushing her large head closer to Amelia as if to see her better.

Amelia swallows, bunches her fists in her shift dress and looks Morla as directly in the eye as a nine-year-old who looks like a twenty-year-old can look a giant, mountain-shaped turtle in the eye. "I'm looking for where all the answers in Fantasia lie. It's a place unbeset by individuals, where answers can be found from the cosmos itself."

"We know of the place you speak, but that's still not a question, child." Morla sounds tetchy then, surly and slow. "Leave us in peace if you haven't a real question for us; hurry if you do. We grow impatient."

Amelia sets her mouth into a frown, determined. "Where is this place?"

"We're not _deaf_ , child."

"And _I'm not a child_ ," Amelia shouts.

Morla's wrinkled head billows sideways as she creases her craggy mouth into a mockery of a smile. "We see you are in need of more knowledge than you ask. We will help you."

"Thank you," Amelia says, sounding somewhat confused.

"Keep North," Morla intones, deep and resonant. Her voice is like echoes in a deep, deep cavern now. Ariadne feels cold just from the exhalation of Morla's voice. "The Land of the Dead Mountains. You remember the poem, sweet Bastian?"

They all turn to Bastian in unison. Ariadne can see the corners of Morla's mouth twitch upwards, making her grin take on a macabre shape. "Bastian?" Ariadne prompts, trying not to sound too scared, because Bastian's face is pure fear.

"Yes," Bastian says, after a moment, a hesitation that makes all the sound in Fantasia drop away for a second. "Better the Hunstman should perish in the swamps, for in the Dead Mountains there is a deep, deep chasm where dwelleth Ygramul the Many, the horror of horrors."

Ariadne lets the words run over her. Bastian had to fight to remember it. He had to drop Fantasia to remember it. The lines are Seb's then, something _Seb_ created just for the book. She's cold with the fear as she looks over as Bastian. Some of Seb's leaked through _into_ the dream, even though Bastian's in control of the body.

It's not good. It _can't_ be good.

Maybe Bastian's decision to fade away at the end of this all was in his mind when they arrived in Fantasia, and Seb slipped into the gap some. That Seb managed it and not Arthur is.... not a good sign.

"Use her gift to take you to the Southern Oracle. The third gate is your destination. You have what you need," Morla sniffs, "now leave us in peace. Or do we need to push you off?"

The floor rumbles beneath their feet.

"Let's go," Ariadne says. Bastian nods a goodbye at Morla, who merely closes her eyes and starts pulling her boulder of a head back into the dark cave of the mountainside.

* * *

This side of the Swamp of Sadness is shorter than the other side. Ariadne's always had a tentative grasp on where the _middle_ is of things; she's gotten into more than one argument with a lecturer about where the middle of a U-shaped building actually is. She thinks mathematically that the middle should be somewhere in the building, but her lecturers insist mathematically the middle of such a building with left and right wings is somewhere in the square outside courtyard between them.

And she's digressing. Because it's easier than looking at Bastian's tense back as they pick through the last of the swamp as quickly as they can. Ariadne's pants are completely ruined all the way up to the knee.

"Okay," she says, to their backs, "I'm not as big a Fantasia geek as the rest of you. Who's Ygramul?"

"The horror of horrors," Bastian says, helpfully.  
"Eat dirt," Ariadne calls back, automatically.

"I can't access the right memory," Bastian adds, in an odd formal tone, "but I think... you're scared of spiders, right?"

"Of course not," Ariadne lies, and then an old memory hits her, and she almost slips off the stone she's balancing on. "Oh, no. _No_."

"We need her to bite us," Amelia calls back, not looking back to see Ariadne's expression. It's probably a smart idea; Amelia might not react well to the horror on Ariadne's face. "We'll die in an hour once she does, but we need to get to the answer."

"She's fearless," Bastian mutters, appreciatively.  
"We need to let a giant spider _bite us_?" Ariadne mutters. Her next step brings her feet down onto something for solid. Solid land, for whatever _that_ means in a dream. She looks past Amelia to the horizon. The mist is clearing. A smudge of dark grey rises above it.

"Ahead," Bastian says. "Through the line of the mountains." He pauses ahead of Ariadne and turns to her, holding his hand out. Ariadne blinks at him for a moment, because Bastian had been keeping his distance from Eames steadfastly. Apparently she's a different matter, as when Ariadne takes his hand and he helps her up a small slope, nothing happens. Bastian stays Bastian.

Apparently, Ariadne doesn't have the same pull over his heart as Eames does.

"The Dead Mountains," Ariadne says. "Maybe five minutes til the chasm." Her eyes narrow at Bastian. "Which I wouldn't have dreamed in if I'd known there was going to be a _giant spider put in it._ "

"Hey, you said you read the book," Bastian says, almost playfully, holding up his hands when he releases her. He looks back into the Swamp of Sadness, an almost elegiac look on his face. "It's not my fault you don't remember all of it."

"My friends were bigger fans of the film," Ariadne says. Bastian's face tightens. For a moment she thinks it's disapproval, but then she hears it too.

The same low, scraping growl as before.

Her eyes fly to Bastian's.

"Gmork knows the Swamp better than anyone," he says, his voice sounding strained, pure fear on his face. "Before you had a decent suggestion."

"I did?" Ariadne asks, flickering a fearful look across the edge of the swamp.

"Yup," Bastian says. " _Run_!"

He doesn't wait for her. Ariadne wonders if Bastian's ever learned chivalry. Why would he, in a world of his own creation? It'll have been _Seb_ who was taught the rules of society, and Arthur who took them to heart and followed them by rote.

"We could do with a luckdragon right about now," Amelia calls out, as they thunder along the new range of landscape. This is the land of the Dead Mountains, and it's all grey, grey, grey as far as the eye can see, like cracked sidewalk slabs.

 _Step on a crack and break your mother's back,_ Ariadne thinks, arbitrarily.

"...isn't Falcor supposed to show up when we're most in need?" Ariadne asks Bastian as she matches her pace to his.

He's a little slow. Then again, he is running on his toes, just as oddly as both he and Seb walk. _Like a dancer_ , Eames said - but there's nothing graceful about it when applied to a run. There's no spring in the step at all.

"No," Bastian says. "Unless I wish for him specifically, Falcor's a luckdragon. It's completely random. I-" He makes a show and tell of hauling in a breath, obviously thinking of the best way to phrase what he's thinking. "-I guess I don't want to see him. We said goodbye a long time ago. I think he knew."

"Bastian-" Ariadne starts, still overwhelmed by it all. He throws her a rueful smile as Amelia shouts, shattering the quiet, intimate moment.

"Ahead, ahead, come _on_ ," Amelia yells.

"I regret forming all of Fantasia in my head when we're just going the book route," Ariadne mutters. "My poor _brain_."

"I wouldn't have been able to call the creatures in without the full layout," Bastian tells her kindly, keeping his gaze focussed on the slabs. The farther they get into the Land of the Dead Mountains, the more rugged and uneven the cracked sidewalk slabs become, and the land on either side of them is starting to rise higher and higher. It's like the mountains are growing either side of them as they run, but it's just an optical illusion due to the slow graduation. "Besides, Amelia might not have taken to Cairon's suggestion."

"She's... oddly suggestible."

"I'd noticed that too," Bastian says, looking troubled. Then he looks at her, and maybe he's not _that_ ungraceful because he manages to navigate over the cracks while still running _while_ looking at her. It's pretty impressive, actually. "Maybe because she's so young."

"But she _thinks_ she's an adult," Ariadne says.

Bastian looks forward again. "Who are we to say otherwise?"

It's philosophical. Ariadne makes a murmuring sound, because she doesn't have space for philosophy in her head past this whole _killing Seb to save Arthur_ dilemma.

"Besides," Bastian adds, thoughtfully, "Dom's an adult and look at _his_ life choices."

Ariadne laughs. The sound feels like sandpaper in her lungs, and it _feels_ a little too sad, but considering how sad and torn she's felt over the whole situation, the fact that she _can_ laugh is a considerable one.

And then Ygramul rises up from the depths of the chasm a little way ahead of them and Ariadne's too busy swallowing down an instant mouthful of bile to do anything else.

She wants to skid to a halt. _Horror of horrors_ is what Bastian said and it's not an underestimation of any kind. Ygramul still hasn't pulled her full bulk out of the chasm yet and Ariadne feels violently ill, like her stomach's contracted and her skin is too tight and her legs are suddenly unable to move.

Amelia keeps running, right up to the spider as Ygramul's final last two legs waver out of the chasm and onto the ground, and it's an instinct to follow her that's deep in Ariadne, stronger than her revulsion at the eight-legged monster in front of her, its distended rippling belly and its head, larger than Morla's, and a thousand miles away from Morla's beauty. There's a subtle siren call about Ygramul, a compelling attraction to move closer. _Come into my lair, said the spider to the fly._

"Please, Ygramul, we require your assistance," Amelia shouts, undaunted as she looks up into the terrifying face of the giant spider, its numerous fangs bundled in its slightly gaping mouth, crowded like wiggling stalactites in its dark face.

"She's also called _the many_ ," Bastian says, and his voice is quiet. Ariadne startles. She hadn't realized she'd slowed to a stop, or that Bastian was still alongside her.

"Why-" Ariadne starts, and then she sees why, and she shuts her mouth. Pushes it in a tight line like she could _stop_ Ygramul from getting inside her, from crawling inside her-

Because Ygramul, the _Many,_ isn't actually a giant spider. She - as Bastian defines her - is a hundred, a _thousand_ little hornet-like insects, all bundled together and moving in perfect synchronicity to give the illusion of a giant spider.

"They share a single hive-mind," Bastian explains, and he moves forwards, rolling his sleeve up, showing one pale wrist. "If you would be so kind, Ygramul. We have need of your poison."

"Kill you it will, master Bastian," Ygramul - the _many -_ hisses, and her voice is a chorus of a thousand small, buzzing voices. She sounds pleased at the concept. "If you are so eager to succumb to my cold death, perhaps we could wrap you up. You'd live longer, my darling."  
"I'm not your darling," Bastian shouts, and then shakes himself, hissing under his breath a little. "If you could just oblige me this once, Ygramul-"

"We oblige you all the time," the many hisses, sounding angry, and Ygramul loses her shape for a little as the hornet-like insects buzz in fury for a moment. "We shall this time."

"Appreciated," Bastian calls up. "Just hold out your wrist," he explains to the others, pushing his pale wrist out even more. Three of the insects detach from Ygramul and fly over to them.

It's not as terrifying as being bitten by a ginormous spider, but it's pretty damn close. Ariadne swallows as the many allotted to her drifts over. Far behind it, Ygramul, in her spider form, curls her shifting, silver head into an even more gruesome smile. She trembles a little, allowing herself a little fear, but she tilts her head and glares the insect in the eye.

"When it bites you," Bastian says, "wish really hard for the Riddle Gate. It's guarded by the giant golden sphinx. We'll all appear there together."

"Shouldn't one of us stay?" Ariadne says, feeling like a complete coward, but the single many is drifting towards her, looking even more lethal the closer it gets to her. "In case Eames catches up with her?"

Bastian throws her a sceptical look. "Do you honestly believe he will?" He swallows, looks away from Ariadne to where Ygramul looks inordinately pleased with herself. "He's gone."

"You say that like you know."

"I _do_ ," Bastian says, like it hurts him to say. "I can't feel him anywhere." He looks a little sick, and Ariadne can understand, because that's Arthur. That's _Arthur_ hijacking Bastian's connection with Fantasia. _So it's not just Seb that's leaked through a little,_ she thinks.

Ariadne feels sick too - that's because she's a decent aim with a crossbow, but she's no Cobb or Arthur. And without Eames to back her up, she's _really_ hoping they don't run into Gmork or the clowns any time soon. Or the Nothing. Although even an incredible crossbow-aim couldn't do a _thing_ to that all-encompassing ravenous cloud. "Really hope you did get that map down," he says, sharply changing topic. "If you got it wrong-" He hisses out loud in pain as his many just speeds into his wrist, colliding with the soft exposed skin unkindly.

"Then?" Ariadne manages, as her own many does the same, speeding into her wrist. It's like getting twenty injections all at once; tears come to her eyes for the first time in the last week for purely physical pain.

"We might appear in the middle of nowhere," Bastian says, looking a bit moist-eyed himself. "How many chasms exactly are you holding in your head right now?"

"I appreciate your vote of confidence," Ariadne says sourly, and then her stomach growls, embarrassingly loud. She frowns. It's not often that hunger's a problem in the dreamscape.

Then she pauses, because she's not hungry.

It's not her stomach.

She turns in horror to see a familiar figure at the horizon.

"Gmork," Ariadne breathes, and the dark wolf starts to run towards them, baring his shiny white teeth as he runs at them, full speed. She feels the urge to unleash a crossbow, but that's not her best escape tool at the moment.

"Close your eyes and wish!" Bastian yells. "The Riddle Gates!"

The last thing Ariadne wants to do is close her eyes. Gmork's getting closer, his dark coat glinting, and as he comes closer, she can see blood on his muzzle. Cobb's blood, she thinks, dizzily. She wants to keep her eyes open so she can see her death coming. Her head's buzzing. Her wrist burns.

"Ariadne, Amelia, _now_ ," Bastian screams, and he sounds so much older than his years, than Arthur's years, than _Morla's_ years and Ariadne automatically does what he says. She screws her eyes shut and thinks, _Riddle Gates, Riddle Gates, Riddle Gates_ -

But it's not going to work. She can hear Gmork's claws scraping against the cracked grey slabs of the Land of the Dead Mountains. She can hear the low, growling hurtling from the depths of his throat. She can smell his sour breath, and feel the ghosting touch of his paw heading for her exposed throat and-

-the world disappears beneath her feet.

Ariadne opens her mouth to scream, to yell, to say something, to do anything, but she can't. There's nothing but wind forcing itself down through her throat, pushing into her, filling her up and hollowing her out, and all she wants to do is scream and scream but she can't, she can't, and it hurts, it _hurts_ , when is this going to be over, please, _please_ -

-and the world reconstitutes itself around her at exactly the moment Ariadne's thinking _it's too much, stop, stop, stop_.

Somewhere in the howling Ariadne must have been thinking the right thing, because she's standing in a desert, a bright light in her eyes. She blinks, her eyes hurting, residual pain from the teleportation, and then she focuses and her breath catches in her throat for an entirely different reason than being unable to breathe.

The Southern Oracles, also known as the Riddle Gate, are glorious. Not exactly _beautiful,_ just achingly, terrifyingly _glorious_. A pair of golden women, with the haunches of a lion and giant wings like an eagle, the Sphinges stand over two hundred feet high.

"In Fantasia tradition," Bastian says, in a reverent voice which echoes in this large open space. There's nothing but desert for miles behind them, and there's a gentle wind that whips Ariadne's hair in front of her face. Amelia looks nervously between Bastian and the Oracles, fear her only expression. He swallows, looking up at the faces of the Sphinges, and starts again. "In Fantasia tradition, they say the Southern Oracles are blind. That when you walk through between them, they throw all the riddles of the world at you, and you have to keep answering them and answering them until you've answered them all. Or until you die, whichever comes first." His eyes move slowly to something in between the Oracles, on the ground beneath their clawed feet. "Usually you die."

"So we go around them?" Ariadne says.

"No," Amelia says, "I've read the book. A million times. You have to go _through_ them to get to the Mirror Gate."  
"The Gate where you can see only truth," Ariadne says, recalling that much at least.

"Cobb - Atreyu," Bastian quickly amends, "he was lucky when he got through. He was nearly blind with fear..."

"There's three of us," Amelia says bravely, "chances are _one_ of us might get through."

"That's not how it works," Bastian says philosophically, rocking on his heels and looking up at the Oracles. The light reflected from the Oracles make his face shine faintly, a gold hue that makes him look as old as Seb told Ariadne he mentally is. "Of course, it's not how it worked for Atreyu, either. I just let him _think_ it did."

"Huh?" Ariadne says, blinking.

"I let Cobb think he was special," Bastian says, shrugging. "I liked Dame Eyola. She liked him. She liked him to be happy. It seemed to make sense at the time."

"It bloody makes sense now," Ariadne snits, even though it's not the place and time. "You might have incepted him in a dream. Not even a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, a regular, level _one_ dreamscape. It might explain his whole God complex."

Bastian barks in laughter.

Amelia's soft, vulnerable voice breaks the moment. "I... don't know what either of you mean."

They both turn to look at Amelia. Ariadne tries to look apologetic, even though she doesn't feel sorry at all for her outburst.

"You just get one riddle," Bastian says. "You get it right? Bingo. You get it wrong? You're toast." He smiles a rueful smile. "We should go together. Three brains are better than one. And we can burn up together if we're wrong."

"Charming," Ariadne says, and Amelia nods earnestly at Ariadne, agreeing with her. It's the first time Amelia hasn't looked at Ariadne like she wants to hurt her, so it's a definitely improvement. "Let's go," she says, reluctantly. The sky's darkening. There's no way to tell how long they've been in Fantasia, or how long before the somnacin stops working and they wake up in the terror carnival again.

"Good idea," Amelia says, backing up a little, her eyes wide.

Ariadne whips around. In the distance, far _off_ in the distance but definitely still there, are two pale figures. She doesn't need the glint of something shiny in their hands to know the clowns have found them.

"The Oracle takes a while to charge up between riddles," Bastian says. "If we get there first and solve it before they get here, the gate will hold them off."

"And if we don't solve it in time?" Ariadne asks.

"Then the clowns can come into the light and will slit our throats before the Sphinxes can burn us," Bastian says, too promptly. Ariadne's stomach falls.

"You heard him," Amelia says. "Let's go!"

They exchange a brief nod, and then walk forward. Bastian and Ariadne hold back, letting Amelia take the point.

"We have to let her solve it," Bastian says, keeping _sotto voce_ so only Ariadne can hear. "These obstacles only make her hero if _she_ solves them. She needs to pass this Gate by her own merit for the Mirror Gate to mean _anything_."

Ariadne nods.

The three of them pass by the feet of the right Sphinx, heading into the space between them. There are various corpses in various stages of decomposition littering the paths, framing a way through the sand. They walk in silence, strangely matching measured footsteps, even though the clowns are gaining on them.

The space between the Oracles demands nothing less than this odd reverence.

Ariadne's thinking _maybe they're broken_ when light floods the space, and they all still. She risks a look up, and the Oracles have opened their eyes, just a little; slits of burning, golden light fall down on them. Ariadne's face feels warm. She feels like the Oracles are going to open their eyes wider, wider, and they're just going to burn down to their bones like the skeletons half buried in the sand.

And then the Oracles start speaking, and it's like they're speaking directly into her mind. They sound like two young girls, speaking almost simultaneously. Some of the syllables overlap each other, but the riddle is clear:

"You saw me where I never was and where I could not be. And yet within that very place, my face you often see. What am I?"

Amelia turns to them. In the bathing golden light she looks even older still, her pale hair absorbing the color of the light, _glowing_ with it. "I don't know," she says, her thin, vulnerable voice echoing around them. Her words cause a reaction in the Oracles - their terrible, bright eyes open a slither more. The light and the heat of their gaze intensifies.

"You know," Bastian says, his voice as steady as possible. "Think, Amelia. Think."

"You can do this," Ariadne says. She risks a look back. The clowns have covered half the distance to the Oracles. If Amelia takes too long, then they could burn up and with that, their whole chance. Amelia won't believe a dream like this again. They might be able to find her again, but she won't believe a quest like this could make a difference. " _Think_."

"You saw me where I never was," Amelia says, as if to herself. "You saw me where I never was-" Her eyes trail the sand beneath their feet, and the light intensifies again. Ariadne would be sweating in the real world. As it is, her lungs feel a little tight. The heat is beginning to be uncomfortable. Amelia's eyes pause as she reaches a broken skull, and she swallows visibly. The light intensifies _again_ , and Amelia's head whips up. "In the carnival," she says, fast, delighted, "in the carnival I was in the Hall of Mirrors. I went in there because it looked safe, but there weren't any mirrors, I couldn't see myself-"

"So what's the answer?" Bastian asks. He's yelling. Ariadne doesn't understand why, until she realizes the Oracles are making a sound of their own, like a dull, pressured whistling that makes her bones rattle a little now she's aware of it. "Amelia!"

"My reflection," Amelia shouts up to the two Oracles. "It's my reflection!"

There's a moment where the eyes open just a slit more, and Ariadne thinks _this is it_ and she reaches out, grasping, and finds Amelia's hand in her own. They clench onto each other, and the light's so bright it hurts, and Ariadne can just about see Bastian taking Amelia's other hand.

And then the light drops.

The answer's right and the Oracles are letting them through.

"Let's go," Bastian barks, and Ariadne nods, and they jog out of there. It's not until they're on the other side, and Ariadne risks a look back to see the clowns reach the feet of the Oracles and jolt, like some invisible force is holding them back, that Ariadne releases the breath she's been holding and realizes that she's still clinging onto Amelia's hand.

They don't run this next part of desert, even though they all know the clowns are only delayed a little by the Oracles.

Ariadne _feels_ rather than knows that it can't make much difference. There's poison pulsing in their veins that will kill them in a short space of time anyway; Ygramul's price for the power of teleportation.

From the almost serene looks on Bastian's and Amelia's faces, they can feel it too.

Ariadne knows what it is the instant she sees it, looking ahead of them in the distance, looking like nothing but a pile of rocks from the distance they're at. Bastian explains what it is regardless.

"The Magic Mirror Gate. It shows you who you truly are." Bastian's voice is hushed. The whole space feels like it requires softness and reverence. It feels like they're walking through a cathedral, arching ceilings and amazing stained glass windows and serenity permeating every motion and every shadow, but they're outside. There's nothing but sand, and darkening blue sky, and stars, and a short distance away, the Magic Mirror Gate.

"I should be scared right now," Ariadne says. "Being scared's the default emotion here. No one likes seeing who they really are." She means it as a question but it comes out as a statement, reassuring them all of this essential fact, that they are all really should be scared of this innocuous mirror gate.

A gate which truly _could_ show them their true selves, as pure as their subconscious sees it, because this is a dream and after all...

Ariadne's dreamed it to _have_ that power.

They should be scared, but no one is.

They pause a small distance away from it.

"I should... go first," Amelia says. "I don't know why, I just think... I should go first." She smiles at each of them in turn, and lets go of their hands. Ariadne sidles closer to Bastian, not wanting to be alone, and they watch as Amelia walks over to the gate.

The surface of the mirror is like still, clear water. Her reflection as she approaches is a perfect reversed image of her dream self, but as she gets closer, her reflection grows younger. Her roughly cropped golden hair grows, and grows, and her height lowers. Her face fills out a little, remnants of baby fat curving her cheeks. Her nightgown morphs into the soft green of a hospital gown.

Amelia, still looking like an adult outside of the mirror, makes this strangled sound in the back of her throat. Amelia in the mirror stares at her, tears tracking down her face, and young Amelia's head is shaking, and shaking. Ariadne's gaze is focused on the image of the young girl, and when she looks just a little to the left, Amelia in Fantasia looks identical to the mirror's reflection too.

She turns from the mirror, color in her face where in real life, on the bed, there is none. She looks healthy and alive, and a little sad. "I remember," Amelia says, her voice a little dull. "I _remember_." She turns fully away from the mirror. As she does, her reflection grows again into older Amelia, who gives her retreating, younger self a sad, soft wave goodbye before disappearing.

Amelia runs up to them, her golden hair flying behind her, her face twisted in an odd shape like she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. "I remember everything," she says. "I got sick. Really sick. I should have gotten better."

"We came to wake you up," Bastian says, her strained smile mirrored on his face.

Amelia's face falls. "You can't."

Bastian frowns, and then realizes what Ariadne's noticed too. That Amelia's looking behind him. To the two clowns, that have caught up with them. Ariadne swallows a sour sound of surprise and raises the crossbow, but Amelia, wise for her short years, puts her hand on the top of it and forces it down.

"I'm sorry I didn't like you at first," Amelia says. "I thought you were _her_."

"Her?" Ariadne asks, confused.

"Mom," Amelia says, like she's answering her question, but the clowns falter. Like Amelia's calling to them. As Ariadne watches, the clowns almost _ripple_ , and combine into one. Two twin cleavers drop soundlessly to the sand. The sad expression on the remaining clown's face seems familiar. "Mom didn't want me to wake up. She liked the attention."

The clown tilts its head. _Her head,_ Ariadne thinks in horror, and the clown reaches up to its neck. The makeup's a mask, Ariadne realizes, wondering why she didn't see that before.

"You can't wake me up until you stop her giving me the medicine," Amelia says. "The medicine that's stopping me from waking up."

"What is it?" Bastian asks, urgent.

"I don't know," Amelia says. "But she gives it to me. Just stop her, and you'll save me." Amelia moves away from Ariadne and Bastian and towards the clown. All her fear for the clowns from before is just replaced by pure sadness. "Mom, why did you do that to me? How could you, Mom?"

The clown pulls the mask away, and it's Amelia's mother, looking just as sad as her daughter. Amelia remembers then. Remembers Amelia's mother coming to talk to Ariadne, when any other mother would want to hear the full explanation of what Cobb was planning to do.

Remembers the expression on Amelia's mother's face when quizzing Ariadne about their chance of completing this. Ariadne had taken her question at face value at the time, but in hindsight, the nervousness in her tone was transparent.

She didn't _want_ them to succeed. She wanted them to _fail_.

"I-" Amelia's mother starts. "I-"

"That's what I thought," Amelia says, and resolutely turns her back on her. Behind her, Amelia's mother collapses to her knee, and then slowly turns to white and red dust which spills away on a slow gust of wind. Amelia lifts her face, and looks at Ariadne and Bastian. "Can I go home now?"

Bastian nods, tersely. "Of course. All you have to do is walk through that mirror. Find Mr. Eames and Mr. Cobb. They'll get you back to your bed."

Amelia nods. "When you get there, wake me up, please," she says, nods at them, and then turns back to the mirror. She pauses for a second, and then runs at the mirror full-tilt. No fear.

"Wish for where you want to go," Bastian calls after her.

Amelia doesn't turn back to let him know she's heard him, but she yells, "Daddy!" before she hits the glass and then she _does_ hit the glass, except she doesn't shatter it - it remains like an odd, vertical water and swallows her whole.

"Well," Ariadne says, into the silence. "Wow."

"Wow indeed," Bastian repeats. He can't meet her eyes when he says, "Some parents are complete _shits_."

Ariadne can't say anything to that. Bastian's mom, and now Amelia's mom... _Mal was a mom too,_ she thinks, and resolve tightens in her spine. She looks across at Bastian, and keeps her face as neutral as possible.

And she hopes like _hell_ that Arthur's holding back the knowledge that this is her faking face.

"Come on," Ariadne says, with false cheerfulness. "Let's look."

"We don't have to," Bastian says, rolling his eyes. "We'll go back to the carnival in a short time without doing anything."

"Gmork's still back there," Ariadne says. "I want to go forward." She steps forward, and holds his gaze. "I want to see. Come with me?"

"You do realize Amelia went on her own, and she's nine years old?" Bastian teases, but offers her his arm regardless. Ariadne takes it, and raises her eyebrows.

"What can you do," she says with a shrug, philosophically.

She keeps her eyes on the mirror as they walk up to it. This part of Fantasia is silent, too on the edge of the landscape for any of the other creatures to live. The nearest ones are the gnomics, Engywook and Urgl. But if Ariadne was in the mood to talk to Fantasians, she's _not_ in the mood to try and pass the Oracle again, and she _hated_ the teleportation with Ygramul's poison.

No, going forward is best. Besides, Ariadne has one last mission.

"Did Arthur let you know," Ariadne says, as they walk up to the mirror. For a moment it looks like _she's_ Bastian in the mirror, but it's just the way they've approached the mirror. In the mirror, Ariadne doesn't look any different. Not a little older, or a little wiser, or anything else experience is supposed to do to you. Her reflection _is_ her reflection, and Ariadne hopes that means she's just fully aware of who she is.

And what she's capable of.

"Know what?" Bastian asks, his eyes looking at his own reflection with a little worry. Ariadne can understand. The surface of the mirror is _exactly_ like water, and Amelia's exit has left ripples still echoing across the crystal surface; Bastian's reflection is broken, and that's completely apt.

"That Eames puts backdoors in every landscape we build," Ariadne says, in as conversational a tone as she can.

She's been waiting for this. Silently clocking the backdoors which Eames insisted were put in all over the place. Knowing _one_ of them was going to have to try this when they could.

"Oh," Bastian says, blinking. "Yes. Of course. He keeps thinking about the Inception job and... Mal." His voice hitches a little. "I suppose Ygramul's a backdoor on her own."

"Yes," Ariadne says, her tongue feeling too large for her throat. She swallows and continues. "In the Inception job it was ventilation tunnels."

"You're saying you put tunnels through Fantasia?" Bastian adds, jokingly.

"No," Ariadne says, deceptively casual. "I'm saying I put back _doors_."

Bastian's eyes widen a little but it's too late. Ariadne thinks the door _into_ the Mirror gate, a plain, wooden door like the door to the warehouse. She twists, launches herself at Bastian, and grabs him by his upper arms. She takes him by surprise, and spins him to the door frame before he can even react.

His eyes fly to hers, but she's too quick. She's already pushing him through by the time he realizes what's going on.

"I'm sorry, Arthur," Ariadne says, emphasising _Arthur,_ and hurls Bastian through the door.

Behind the door's pure utter black. Ariadne stares in horror, takes a breath and hurries through the door to the other side.

It slams behind her. She whirls, seeing the Mirror Gate reform behind her, its rippling surface showing her with a frown even though Ariadne can't feel a frown on her own forehead.

She is worried, though. And there's maybe every good reason to be worried, as she finds out when she turns around.

Because in front of her is Arthur, standing in one of his trademark outfits; one of his favorite suits but without the jacket. His hair's slicked back and there's a stunned expression on his face.

And to his right is Seb, standing in his hoodie and casual pants, his hands in his pockets and a surly expression on his face. His hair's hanging loosely in his face, and he doesn't look too pleased to see her at all, which he emphasis by making a low growl that sounds like a higher pitched version of Gmork's growling.

Ariadne doesn't know what to say. "Huh," is what makes it out of her mouth.

It's probably accurate enough.

Then she realizes something else. She doesn't want to say his name, in case it undoes what she's done and it brings him back. But that's definitely Arthur and Seb in front of her. Her eyes fly to Arthur's, and he nods behind her. Ariadne turns, expecting to see her own reflection, but it's not.

It's Bastian.

He's stood like he's trapped in the mirror, and he looks sad, but resigned. Ariadne's heart is in her mouth, but she swallows it down. He's said he would give himself up for Arthur, and he intimated before he would give Seb a chance, and this must be it.

Bastian lifts his chin and then he smiles at Ariadne, a brilliant, genuine smile. His cheeks crease into dimples. It's infectious. Ariadne can't help but return it.

" _Thank you_ ," he mouths at her, still smiling. " _Goodbye_."

It's instinct for Ariadne to move forward, but on this side of the Mirror gate, the surface is hard, like glass. She puts her hand out, flat against it. Bastian pushes his palm against hers on the other side, nods once, and disappears.

Tears bite into her eyes almost immediately, and she squeezes her eyes tightly shut for a moment, mourning him. "Goodbye," she says out loud, even though it's too late.

Bastian's already gone.

"He's right," Seb calls out, his voice sharp like a gun-shot. "To say thank you."

Ariadne whirls back on her feet. Arthur's face is as confused as Ariadne's feeling.

"You promised me you'd speak my corner," Seb says. "And you've erased Bastian and given me a good chance to rid Arthur from the equation too. Thanks is probably less than the situation really deserves."

Ariadne opens her mouth. "Wha-" is all she manages to get out, because Seb yanks something out of his pocket and charges _directly_ at Arthur.

"Guess you should have kept all that martial arts training in your _head_ ," Seb bites out, and throws himself at Arthur.

Fantasia's surreal enough, Sphinges and shifting landscapes and strange creatures aside. This moment beats them _all_.

"I didn't give you it _all_ ," Arthur bites back, and that's _pure_ Arthur, danger and determination, and then... they're fighting. Seb versus Arthur. Rage versus perfect, exact talent. Ariadne watches, a little baffled by it. She feels like she should step in, but then she remembers Bastian disappearing, and feels like she's done more than enough.

Besides, this isn't really her fight. This has to be Arthur fighting for himself. He _has_ to realize how much more he _wants_ it than Seb. If Ariadne lets it be anything else, if she swoops in to save the day, it'll be just like Mal. Coming in with what _she_ thought was right, and splintering Arthur into three regardless.

 _Splitting Bastian into three,_ her brain reminds her.

Their fight is vicious. Arthur manages to disarm Seb, which earns him a full-force punch in the face in return, but it's better than being stabbed-

Except, both of them seem to have a thought at the same time. Which makes sense, them inhabiting the same brain. The thought hits Ariadne somewhat at the same time too:

Like maybe it's _dying_ first that will win them the body back.

They both dive for the knife that's lying in the sand at the same time, but Ariadne's closer to it. She throws herself at it, covering it with her body, her hand scrabbling in the dust until her fingers close around the metal.

She pushes herself up to her feet and holds out the knife, blade first, as both of them advance on her.

"Ariadne," Arthur says, quietly.

"Do it, Ariadne," Seb goads, mimicking Arthur's firm tone. "Killing one of us might kill us forever. Or it might choose who wins. Who knows?" He steps closer, and Arthur follows, matching him.

The difference is, Arthur's hands are more stretched out towards Seb, casually. Like he's even now prioritising Ariadne over himself.

Ariadne looks at Arthur, trying to will him to understand, and then she turns and throws the knife as far into the desert as she can.

" _No,_ " Seb breathes, and moves to go for it.

Arthur side-tackles him. They land in the sand at Ariadne's feet. She shrieks and shuffles back, away from the flailing elbows and knees as they start pummelling each other.

"You don't deserve to live," Seb howls, thrusting the heel of his hand into Arthur's nose. "You have no _imagination_ -" His howl degenerates into a loud whine of pain when Arthur repays the hit to his nose to Seb's groin. "You're ridiculous and boring and I would live the life a _million_ times better than you would! What do you have going for you?"

One of Arthur's hands clenches around Seb's throat. Coolly, Arthur looks at him, dispassionately. After a moment he says, quietly, simply, "Eames."

Ariadne's heart lodges in her throat. Because she's wrong. This isn't just Arthur and Seb in this fight. It's Eames too. _But if Arthur isn't a part of his own survival, he'll never think himself good enough._

Arthur pushes down on Seb's throat harder. Seb struggles beneath him. Ariadne clutches at the material of her sleeves, crushing the fabric.

Arthur's won.

"Do it," Seb manages. " _Do_ it."

For a moment, it looks like Arthur is going to kill him, right then and there in the sand. Ariadne's heart is hammering in her chest, loud and off-beat.

Arthur's eyes are flint-cold, and his jaw tenses, and Ariadne's seen that expression on his face a thousand times before he takes down projections. Except his expression softens, and his grip does too. "I can't," he says, his voice tight and small. "I can't do it."

He looks completely stunned, and thoroughly vulnerable.

Seb's eyes flutter shut in utter relief. And then open, burning hard, as he throws his entire weight at Arthur, who's not expecting it. Winded, Arthur's thrown to one side, and Seb pushes into the ground to lever himself up and over. He pushes his elbow into the softest part of Arthur's neck and pushes down with no mercy.

Arthur's hands flail out, grasping uselessly into the sand, and he kicks out, but it's not going to be enough. The light in Seb's eyes is harsh, and his eyes are blacker than Ariadne's ever seen them, and she throws herself forward, but it's not going to be in time.

Ariadne wants to shout out _stop_ , but terror closes her throat, and she skids through the sand, but she's too slow, there's no way she can fight Seb off now.

But there's no way she's going to not try.

She hurls herself onto him, hooking one elbow around his neck, and he loosens the pressure on Arthur's neck, but not enough. She throws her weight to the side as best as she can, but she really does sometimes forget to eat when they're working so hard and as a result she's a good twenty pounds less at least than even _Arthur's_ small frame. They tumble in a heap, Seb sandwiched between them, Arthur still gasping for air like he's not getting enough oxygen. Ariadne thinks they're going to be stuck this way forever.

And then a voice they all know so well cuts through the rage pounding in their eardrums, and they all freeze, simultaneously.

"Stop that _immediately_."

Ariadne doesn't even need the wrong syllable stressed in _immediately_ to recognize the tone, and neither Arthur nor Seb need it either.

They all know Mal's voice.

 _You're not real,_ Ariadne thinks, but it doesn't stop her from climbing to her feet. It doesn't stop her from watching detachedly as Seb and Arthur get to their feet and dust themselves down.

 _She was lovely_ , Arthur said, during the Fischer job. Her voice is a siren spell for all of them.

"Mal-" Seb starts, jerking forwards.

Ariadne shakes her head desperately. This _can't_ be Mal. Cobb's gone out of the dream. It doesn't make sense.

"You shouldn't be fighting." Mal's voice is chiding. She's as beautiful as Ariadne remembers her being, from inside the dreams Ariadne's met her in. Beautiful and almost otherworldly, with her pale green eyes and enticing voice. "Seb, my boy. Why are you fighting?"

Seb blinks. Stutters. "M-me?"

He looks from Mal to Arthur. Arthur's expression is hard. He's looking at Mal like he's been completely betrayed. Like he can't believe Mal's here.

Like he can't believe Mal's here and she's choosing _Seb_ over him.

"Of course you," Mal says, looking directly at Seb. She walks forwards, moving past Arthur without even giving him a side glance. "Arthur was only ever a creation to keep you safe, my love. You have to know that."

"But you-" A sob splits Seb's sentence in half. He's struggling to stay upright. He's looking at Mal like she's the whole world, his eyes wet. It's like Bastian looked at Falcor, when he flew ahead of them in the trial run.

It's like Arthur looks at Eames sometimes.

"You left me," Seb says, hurling it out, bitter and angry. He steps back, jerking himself away from her as she steps towards him, calmly, her arms outstretched like a mother reaching for a hug.

They've all seen how much damage mothers can do today, though. Seb stares at her in disbelief.

"You _died_ ," Seb breathes.

"Oh, my boy. Of course, of _course_ , that's what Arthur let you think. Dominic too, I think. Both so narrow-minded. No imagination." Mal's hands tilt a little, consideringly. "Of course that is the memory Arthur pushed through to you. He didn't want you to know the truth."

"The truth?" Seb glances over at Arthur, an expression that looks a little like hope filtering into his eyes. He looks back at Mal, like he can still scarcely believe she's there.

The same expression is on Arthur's face.

Ariadne wonders over it all. The magnitude of Mallorie Cobb. The awe she elicited from everyone who knew her. Except, sometimes, that's what happened to people who died. Ariadne's got this uncle, who was a real lech when he was alive, a gambler like Eames. She remembers vividly hearing her own mother talk of Uncle Bryan with a handful of negative names and scurrilous vocabulary. Yet even last Christmas, her mom was talking fondly about him, like nothing was wrong with him. Like he was a saint.

Maybe dying didn't erase your sins. It just faded other's memories of them.

"The truth," Mal says. She looks over at Arthur, her expression flint-hard, like she doesn't know him at all. "Let him have it."

"No," Arthur breathes, shifting on the spot. "No-"

"He's let enough of it through," Seb says, squinting at Arthur for a moment. His eyes fly back to Mal. "He's thinking you're _dead_. That you thought real life was a dream and you had to die to get back to reality."

"He's almost right," Mal says, and she steps forwards. Seb doesn't jerk backwards this time, and he lets her slide her hands around his elbows. She looks at him with a soft smile, directly in the eyes. "Arthur's got it wrong, though. He thinks I was _wrong_. But I was right, Seb. We're in a dream."

"I know that," Seb says, "we're in a dream-within-a-dream right this moment."

Mal laughs, and the sound is like tinkling bells. Her eyes never leave his. "We're in a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, my _chéri._ We must die, and die, and die." Her hands tighten around his elbows. "Come with me. Die with me." Her voice lowers. " _Wake_ with me. I have come for you, Seb. You're my favorite. No one else will listen and I'm so alone."

Seb stares at her, stares and stares. Ariadne's completely frozen by his indecision, by the fear of this moment, because it's not the first time she's considered the truth of it all.

It's not the first time she's wondered if Mal was right.

"I'll come with you," Seb breathes, and he's crying, and he looks so, so happy that Ariadne's heart trembles with it. "Of course I'll come with you."

Mal's smile lights up Fantasia more than Bastian's wishes ever could. She lets go of his arms, and wraps one of his hands in hers, and they move towards the Mirror gate, Seb's eyes on her. "We must go to the mirror. Travelling in reverse will do as kindly as travelling through it forward, as Amelia did."

They pause before it. Ariadne moves, but she's stopped by something - Arthur's arm across her shoulders. _That's one of Eames' moves_ , she thinks, and glares at Arthur, expecting him to be readying to do something, to stop this, because this might mean Seb winning-

He isn't doing anything but staring, and there are tears in his eyes.

"Do you trust me, Seb?" Mal says, loud and high and free. "I'll be with you. On the other side. Leap and wish to die, and we'll be together forever."

"I'm ready," Seb says, smiling right into her face, "Oh, Mal, I'm ready." He turns back to the Mirror, and that's when Ariadne remembers.

A thought she'd had only this week.

_When Eames is really rampant into a lie, he's all body and eye contact. He takes you by the elbows and looks deeply into your eyes and is so very, very earnest._

It's not Mal guiding Seb. It's Eames.

It's _Eames_.

"I love you," Eames-as-Mal says, and now Ariadne can see him, in the ripple of the Mirror Gate's surface, part-Mal, part-Eames.

Seb doesn't notice. "I love you too," he says, turns into the Mirror and jumps.

Arthur lets her go. Ariadne stumbles a little, and straightens herself. She stares at the Mirror as it settles, and Eames drops the forge and turns to them, staring impassively.

Ariadne stares at him. "You killed him," she says, a little tremulously.

Eames returns her stare as he moves over to them. "Cobb told me about your pact," he returns, all the arrogant swagger in his voice that she knows so well, "Don't even pretend you wouldn't have done the same."

Ariadne opens her mouth to argue, and finds no valid response there. Just a heaviness in her heart that she should have been gearing up for, knowing it would be coming. Knowing what she was going to be part of.

So she stares back for a moment longer, swallowing, and then Eames turns to Arthur.

Arthur stares back, and he swallows hard, ducks his head for the briefest of moments, and then continues staring. His jaw is tense and Ariadne's never seen him more nervous.

"I'm sorry f-" Arthur starts, after the longest pause, like it hurts to say, and that note of reluctance is like music to Ariadne's ears because Arthur doesn't apologise, that's just who he is, and for him to be trying to apologise but hating it, it's more than she's been hoping for. "I'm-" he starts again.

"Shut up," Eames says. "I just need to know - is this it? Is this you? Are you going to stay this way now?"

Arthur blinks, like it's not what he expected to hear. "Yes?"

Eames' fists tense by his side and Ariadne steps forwards tentatively, getting ready to stand in the way just in case. The emotion blistering in Eames right now is palpable.

"I need you to be sure," Eames says, low and rough, like he's struggling to remain civil.

"Yes," Arthur says, looking at him and nodding. "I'm sure. I'm here. I'm _real_."

Eames lets out this sound. If Ariadne had thought Arthur's keening sound was terrible, this is a thousand times worse, and it's only as he's moving forwards that she realizes she's wrong.

It's a thousand times better. It's a sound of relief that's more immense than anything Ariadne's ever heard. It's utter, heartbreaking despair twisting into joy more pure, more amazing than Ariadne's ever felt, so scorching that she feels burned just standing near.

So when Eames collides into Arthur, slides his hands into Arthur's pristine hair, and kisses him like he'll die if he doesn't, Ariadne can't tear her gaze away from them. She's pretty sure she must be crying in real life because her eyes are stinging.

Arthur stumbles a little, and Eames just slides one of his arms around his hip, keeping him upright, and Arthur - Arthur who doesn't like to be touched - just melts up into Eames, and Arthur makes this sound in the back of his throat which is all surprised pleasure and that's the tipping point.

Ariadne clears her throat. Loudly.

Arthur and Eames break apart instantly. Arthur's cheeks are a dull pink, and Eames is trying to look like a schoolboy who's just been reprimanded, but his grin is just a bit too wide for him to pull it off.

"That's enough of that PDA business," Ariadne says, waving her hands.

"You're just jealous," Eames says, unrepentantly.

"Of course," Ariadne says, and throws herself at Arthur, winding her arms around his neck before he can protest. He's stiff for the longest moment, and then he relaxes into the hug, just a bit, his fingers clenching into her shoulders just for a moment, like he's just reassuring himself that she's there.

Like maybe Ariadne's his constant as much as Arthur is hers.

"I'm glad you're back," Ariadne says, muffled into his neck.

"I'm glad to be back," Arthur mutters.

"And that's enough of _that_ ," Eames says, "if I'm not allowed to, _you're_ not."

Arthur pulls back, and for a moment it's obvious that he's hiding a smile, and Ariadne doesn't want to call him on it, because hiding smiles, that's just what Arthur does. It's going to be a long, long time before Ariadne finds any of Arthur's Arthurish tics annoying.

"I..." Arthur starts, falters, and looks away from Eames. "I don't know if you should have done what you did, though," Arthur says, somewhat blankly. They both turn to him. He looks into the distance for a moment, but then raises his gaze to them, trembling but defiant. "Both of you."

Ariadne flinches.

Arthur's face remains still, frozen - then it relaxes. "But I am grateful that you did," he admits, looking between them. "Thank you."

Eames looks suddenly, immensely embarrassed. "All for you, love," he says, in a tone that's much too jokey to be anything but real, and the look they exchange is so heated that Ariadne's suddenly certain that if she doesn't do something to break this moment then she might be subjected to a rather brilliant floorshow.

"Right," Ariadne says, "we still have the last dregs of the Amelia job. Let's get out of here." She pauses as they both break their mutual gaze to look at her. "Um, how do we get out of here?" She edges a look at the knife still in the sand. "Without stabbing each other, I mean."

"Well, we could go through the Mirror gate too," Arthur says. "Well, we should go through the back door and then go through it forward; going through reverse is instant death. Or..."  
"Or?" Ariadne prompts.

"Or we could let Gmork kill us," Arthur says. "It's only a matter of time. He used to follow Bastian and Atreyu around _everywhere_."

"What's his problem?" Eames mutters, mock-seriously.

"Cobb called him a puppy once," Arthur says, scratching his nose almost apologetically. "You'd be a bit peeved too."

"I dunno," Eames says. "I've always fancied trying to forge myself into an animal."

Arthur rolls his eyes, and Ariadne moves past him, and thinks the safe word again to bring the door back. She pauses as she reaches for the handle, and looks at Arthur. "This isn't going to-" She pauses again, and hunts for the word. " _You_ know," she finishes awkwardly.

"Oh," Arthur says, as Eames looks at him very seriously, "Oh, no." He rubs the back of his neck for a moment, looking oddly vulnerable. "No, there's no one else in my head now. No one but me." He sounds sad then, and lonely, and Ariadne realizes it's not going to be a dusted and done, case closed sort of job. She doesn't know why she ever thought that. The fallout from this job's going to go on, and on. Ariadne's not nervous of the thought, though. She just vows to be around for all of it.

She thinks of Seb. Seb who was still practically a child. Seb who ran away into his own head after Mal died, thinking Arthur was her favorite.

Seb who was so desperate to think he was wrong, that Mal loved him _best_ , that he would walk directly to his death for it.

She's quiet as they pass through the door, then dismiss it and prepare to walk through the mirror. Their reflection is nothing but the three of them. The surface is still.

"One moment," Ariadne says, before they step through and back to the crazy carnival. "Eames, didn't the clowns kill you?"

Arthur turns to look at Eames, alarmed. Clearly that's a memory Bastian suppressed on Arthur's behalf.

"Only a little bit?" Eames offers. Ariadne raises both eyebrows. She catches Arthur in the reflection of the Mirror Gate doing the same. They both share a laugh that tastes too much like relief. "Yes. I got taken down by a pair of bloody clowns. _Don't_ laugh so hard, I saved your lives."

Predictably it just makes Arthur and Ariadne laugh harder. Perhaps Eames can hear the relief in it now, though, because he shrugs ruefully.

"I came back in," Eames says. "'s not like we were sedated."

"Eames," Arthur hisses, using his angry professional voice that they've both been on the receiving end of a few times. "That could have killed you."

"We're in a dream-within-a-dream, pet," Eames says, rolling his eyes and blatantly checking himself out in the mirror as Arthur pitches a fit right next to him. Arthur's hissy fits manifest in a very tense jaw and an automatic hand to his gun. "It's not like dying sent me to limbo."

"No," Arthur grits out, "but an overdose of somnacin in _any_ dream level has the potential to send you to limbo. And don't even pretend you don't know that. You've _used_ that."

"That man in Brazil was a rapist and a paedo. Don't tell me he didn't deserve it," Eames says heatedly, well-rehearsed like it's the beginning of an old argument.

"That's not the issue," Arthur bats back, just as heated. "I'm just saying you shouldn't have. God, Eames, if I'd gotten back and you weren't there-"

He doesn't finish the sentence. He looks at Ariadne awkwardly, embarrassed that he's said too much.

Eames looks inordinately pleased with himself.

"Can we get out of here before you two start making out again and I lose the will to live?" Ariadne says pointedly. Arthur has the grace to look deeply embarrassed.

"On three," Arthur says solemnly, and Eames pushes them through before he even gets to two.

Ariadne wakes in the carnival to the dulcet, annoying tones of Cobb lecturing an already-awake (and nine-year-old again) Amelia about the weirdness of feeling old and waking up young.

She lets him get on with it. There's a certain poetry, she thinks softly, in that the two times Cobb's _seriously_ messed up with Arthur he ended up getting mauled and stabbed through the chest.

She looks over to where Yusuf is throwing rocks out the door. "We should do this more often," he says, "the projections can only climb up one at a time. It's almost therapeutic cracking skulls from this height."

"Someone want to brief me on why you took so long?" Cobb calls across. "Ari? Eames? Seb?"

Eames moves to go towards Cobb, and Arthur puts a hand on Eames' shoulder. "I've got this," Arthur says, low and quiet. Eames narrows his eyes a little. Arthur shakes his head minutely. Eames holds up his hands and backs off, smacking into the wall of the treehouse and throwing the dark room they're holed up in a dirty look.

"It took time," Arthur says. He's speaking slower than normal, but his rhythm - if he's pretending to be Seb like Ariadne suspects - isn't right. That's more reassuring than anything else. "We had work to do."

Cobb frowns, and straightens up. "What do you mean?"

"Killing Bastian, getting rid of the Arthur personality for good-"

Cobb moves so fast that Ariadne regrets blinking, because she missed a good half of his rapid movement. Cobb has Arthur pushed up against the wall, his hands firmly in Arthur's shoulder blades, and his face is pushed up into Arthur's. "You'd better be messing with me, Seb. Because if you've gone and done something like that, I _swear_ you won't be waking up any time soon-"

"And there's the Dominic Cobb the world knows and somehow loves," Arthur retorts, not bothering to disguise the anger in his voice. "Deciding that one forged personality has any right over the other. How come _you_ get to be the voice of god?"

"In _this_ circumstance because I'm the guy with the gun," Cobb says, pulling out a Beretta that Ariadne hadn't seen him packing earlier, and pushing it against Arthur's temple. "So tell me exactly what you did so we can reverse it?"

"Well," Arthur says, "Ariadne pushed Bastian through one of the back doors, saying my name. We splintered into all three of us. Bastian committed suicide and then the two forged personalities had to wrestle to the death. It wasn't pretty."

"Ari," Cobb barks, "tell me your version."

"What he said," Ariadne says, shrugging. "Then Eames came in. He forged into Mal."

"I distracted Seb. Made Seb think Mal was alive, and Seb killed himself to be with her. Mother complex, see. We came back here, Arthur pretended to be Seb, and stole the ammo from your gun while you were blustering," Eames says.

"I," Cobb says. " _What?_ "

Arthur holds up the handful of bullets that Ariadne hadn't notice him take.

"Mal was a thief before she tried forging," Arthur says, fully in his tone now. He hands Cobb the bullets. "She taught me how to pick-pocket."

Eames looks at Arthur, a sour expression on his face. "Shall I punch him or do you want the honors?"

Arthur pushes at the strands of hair in his eyes, annoyed, and brushes dirt off the jeans Seb dreamed him into like Cobb hasn't pushed him against the wall. "It's a dream," Arthur says, "I'm sure I'd be validated in stabbing him."

Cobb squints, and then says, slowly, like he's only just really getting what's going on. "...Arthur?"

"He's finally got it," Arthur says, sliding out of Cobb's grip like it's nothing at all. "I think my violent streak has become too predictable," Arthur informs Eames, like Cob isn't even there. "I need to mix it up a little. Put some variety into my threats."

"Try adding a garrotte to your repertoire. I always find that's a nice variation. Less blood to stain your impeccable suits, too," Eames returns conversationally.

"It's sort of nice to know that he'd _try_ and shoot Seb if he'd done what we pretended he had," Arthur muses. "Seb wouldn't have been able to steal the bullets, either."

"It makes me more inclined to believe he's not one hundred per cent a bastard," Eames says. "Maybe more like ninety eight."

"I'd go with ninety eight," Ariadne chimes in, agreeing.

"I feel like I've completely lost hold of the whole situation," Cobb says, in what would be a humorous tone in any other circumstance. Amelia leans over and pats him on the arm.

"It's okay, Mr. Cobb. You'll catch up eventually," she informs him.

"Yup," Ariadne says into Cob's stunned silence, unable to help the smile, "Cobb just got _owned_ by a nine year old."

"I can fire you," Cobb says.

"But it's Mr. Eames' team," Amelia pipes up, calmly twisting her long golden hair into a side plait.

Eames grins.

"Seriously, Cobb," Arthur says, his tone more sombre now, fully serious. "We'll talk about this later."

Cobb swallows hard, and nods. "For what it's worth, I know what we did to you was-"

"Necessary," Arthur says, and tilts his head. "A little crazy. Completely wrong."

Cobb nods. "All of the above."

"And you and Mal saved my life, and I'll never forget that," Arthur says. "But we're not okay."

Cobb swallows, and stays silent.

Arthur looks at him for a long moment before adding, simply, "We will be."

"Thank you," Cobb says, low and quiet.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your moment, but I may have perhaps overstated how easy this is," Yusuf interjects, sounding strained. "They're sort of climbing on top of each other now to get up. Look at that. Amelia, your subconscious is _quite_ resourceful."

"And you, I need words with you," Arthur says, shaking his head at a still baffled Cobb as he moves over to Yusuf. "How could you let Eames take the second dose of somnacin?"

"Hey," Eames says, "I'm a grown adult, there was no _letting_ -"

"He's pretty resourceful too," Yusuf says morosely. "Threatened to garotte me."

"Ah," Arthur says.

"Not that it matters," Yusuf adds, his tone brighter. "This is a dream."

Arthur frowns at him.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Eames sing-songs.

"I mean," Yusuf says, squinting at Eames for a moment before looking back at Arthur, "it's a dream. I can do things with the compounds I cannot do up there. It's quite a discovery. It's a nice lesson to learn."

"What lesson?" Ariadne says, joining him at the doorway to the tree house. Yusuf leans over to watch again. The blind projections are literally making each other into a staircase. Yusuf was right. It's pretty damn resourceful of them.

"That you mustn't be afraid to dream a little _better_ ," Yusuf says, shrugging. "Seriously, stop being lazy and come look already. It's like Amelia's subconscious has become organised now she's become much more aware."

They all peer out of the door then, at the blind carnival goers throwing themselves on top of each other, soundlessly flailing their arms and climbing over each other to try and make a pile-up to climb on to get into the treehouse for the dream intruders.

"Huh," Ariadne says, "weirdest extraction _ever_."

"I hear you," Cobb mutters, rubbing his chest again surreptitiously to check it's still there.

Something near the PASIV beeps.

"Time to go," Yusuf says.

They all turn to Amelia. She looks up at them, pleadingly. "Wake me up. Please. Wake me up. Don't leave me here."

Ariadne only has time to nod before the ground shifts beneath her feet for the last time.

* * *

She wakes with a jolt, having to blink rapidly to re-adjust to the bright daylight filling Amelia's bedroom. Ariadne pushes herself into a more upright position.

"You're back," Amelia's mom breathes, and her face twitches over to Amelia's still sleeping body. "It didn't work."

She sounds much too relieved. Ariadne's stomach curls, and she forces herself not to glare. She wants to.

She wants to rip her face off _personally_.

Ariadne waits until Cobb gets up from the chair with an apologetic expression. He slides around behind Amelia's mother, as if going for another piece of equipment, and then he casually slides the bolt on the door and pulls out his gun, pointing it directly at Amelia's mom.

"What the hell-" Amelia's father blurts, pushing out of the chair. Ariadne calmly removes her cannula, already knowing Eames and Arthur will catch him.

Sure enough, Eames pushes down on his shoulders, keeping him down in the chair.

"We didn't succeed in waking your daughter up," Eames says, leaning on the back of Amelia's father's chair, "because she's physically incapable of waking up."

"Rubbish," he says, his eyes moving to his daughter's sleeping body, "the doctors all say. She _should_ be capable of waking up. Her body's healthy, it's just her mind-"

"Her body's not entirely healthy," Cobb says, coming up behind Amelia's mom. "Is it?"

"I- I don't know what you mean," Amelia's mom mutters, looking across at her husband, her eyes filling with tears.

"Munchhausen's by proxy," Eames says, straightening. He pulls one of Amelia's toy clowns from the shelf, and pulls its head off. Ariadne startles, but Eames just pushes his fingers into the stuffing and pulls out a bottle of pills. He throws it at Amelia's father, who catches it, his eyes widening at the sight of it. "Take those to a reputable doctor. They'll be able to wake your daughter up."

"We also suggest a quick divorce and criminal proceedings," Cobb adds.

" _Graham_ ," Amelia's mom starts, "I wouldn't, I- this is ludicrous, these are criminals-"

"How did you know?" Ariadne asks Eames quietly, while Cobb helps hold back Amelia's mother and Amelia's father rings for the police and an ambulance for Amelia.

"Been down in a dream with a dreamer pretty high on weed," Eames says. "It's the last time I saw a triple moon when we'd gone under during the day in a well-lit room. I knew none of _you_ were high. Amelia was the only other option. Plus, when you passed me the clown earlier, I could feel the bottle. I had to be sure. I had to be sure _Amelia_ knew what was going on."

"You saved her," Ariadne says, smiling at him.

"You saved Arthur," Eames says, his voice low and almost tremulous. He looks at with the most genuine expression she's ever seen from him. "If you hadn't pushed him through the door, I don't know if I could have gotten through to Seb like I did."

Ariadne swallows, because she doesn't feel like she did enough. She looks over at Arthur, who's checking the rest of the bedroom for any more hidden pills.

He's walking heel-to-toe, measured and precise. When she looks back at Eames, he's watching Arthur's feet too. Checking it's him. It might be a while before they can fully believe he's back.

But he is back, and Amelia's going to be fine, and that's more than any of them really believed going in.

* * *

When Ariadne gets the call from Amelia's father, she knows exactly what it means, and she's halfway through bullying Cobb out of the door to drive them to the hospital before the phone call even finishes.

It's just Graham who greets them at the hospital, leading them into the ward where Amelia is. Ariadne didn't expect to see Amelia's mother there. She's in custody. She took the whole getting arrested thing pretty calmly when the truth was fully out.

Sometimes the truth was an impossible thing to fight against.

"She asked to see you all," Graham tells them, as they approach the ward. "I think you've got a junior extractor on your hands here."

"We'll scare it out of her," Eames reassures him. Graham offers him a weak smile. Real full smiles are a long time away for him, Ariadne thinks.

Amelia remembers them impeccably, which is disturbing considering the dose of hallucinogenics that her mother had her on. It does show a certain propensity for dreamsharing. She likes Arthur the best. Arthur tries his best not to frown at her, but his smiles do look a little bit like constipation.

"She's getting tired," a nurse says pointedly after only ten minutes has passed.

"But-" Amelia protests.

"They'll come back another time," Graham says. Then he looks shiftily at the team. "Um, I mean-"

"We'll be back," Arthur says, warmly, patting him on the arm companionably. A little of the tension leaves Graham's shoulders at that.

"Bastian," Amelia calls, as they all turn to leave.

Arthur turns at that, and frowns slightly, and Ariadne's breath catches in her throat.

 _No_. Surely not. Surely not- but Ariadne can see the color drain from Eames' face as the possibility of it hits him.

The possibility that this isn't over after all.

"Thank you for saving me," Amelia says. "I love Fantasia. Thank you for letting me play there too."

 _Play_ , Ariadne thinks. Well, it's probably a good thing Amelia doesn't remember all the running for their lives they did there.

"You're welcome," Arthur tells her. He shuffles out of the hospital room first, hands in his pockets, and Ariadne follows him.

Eames is quicker. As soon as they're out of sight, Eames turns Arthur, and slams him into the wall. He pulls a gun. "Leave him," Eames barks, glaring into Arthur's eyes. "Get the hell out. You said you'd leave him."

Arthur's eyes scan Eames' face like Eames is a piece of research that doesn't quite make sense. Then Arthur sighs, and in a fast blur of limbs, efficiently disarms Eames and reverses their position before Ariadne can even blink.

"I was _pretending,_ " Arthur says, "Jesus _Christ,_ Eames. Sometimes you're the worst thing in my life."

"Your life is terribly less sad than I'd been assuming it must be, for me to be the worst thing in it," Eames returns.

Except now Ariadne has that inkling of what has been going on; she knows now that their words mean something else. Each insult is a checkpoint, an endearment disguised in a storm. _I hate you -_ which anyone else would read between the lines of their words - means something else entirely. _You're the worst thing_ is its complete opposite.

They both look up as Ariadne clears her throat, because once in the dreamscape was far more than enough. She's jealous of them enough as it is just seeing the way they interact, now she knows what each glance and barb actually means. Arthur returns Eames' gun, unapologetically reaching inside the waistband of Eames' pants to return the gun to its usual hiding spot.

"Come with me," Arthur says. "I've got something to show you both."

Ariadne and Eames share a curious look and follow him.

They're not too sure what to expect, so when Arthur steals Cobb's car keys, justifiably stranding him there for a while in Ariadne's opinion, it's strange that he takes them to the warehouse.

Odder still to see him setting up the PASIV.

"Arthur," Eames starts.

"It's just me," Arthur says. "This isn't dangerous." He sighs, his fingers stilling against the lid of the PASIV. He looks down at the clasps, like it's easier to speak if he's not looking directly at them. "I still have the somnacin-dependency. That illness isn't going to go away. So we need to try this sooner or later and I don't know who else I trust more to get me back." He looks up again, mouth pressed in a line. Ariadne nods and pulls up a lawnchair.

* * *

When they appear in the dream, they're in the Grassy Sea again. The sun is high, and the sky's free even of the paint-smear clouds.

Fantasia is still, without Bastian to bring it to full life, and Ariadne feels sad. She trails her hand through the soft, still grass and remembers him for a moment.

When she looks across at Arthur, he's not exactly smiling, but he's not exactly frowning either. Eames is standing loosely, his hands in his pockets, but there's a tension in his forehead. He doesn't like being here.

He doesn't like the reminder of how close they got to losing Arthur.

"Bastian left me something," Arthur says, slowly, not looking at either one of them, and he pulls something out of one his impeccably tailored pant pockets.

"AURYN," Ariadne breathes, as the intertwined snakes sparkle in the high Fantasian sun. Arthur does smile then, a soft and fond smile tempered with a little melancholy. It's elegiac and professional and so very Arthur that Ariadne's heart stutters in her chest, just for a moment. She might not be in love with him, something which is Eames' territory alone by the slightly awed way he's looking at Arthur and has looked at Arthur since they emerged from the dream, shaken and grieving, but she _loves_ him regardless. If there's nothing else earned from this experience, it's that realisation.

Arthur looks at AURYN with consideration for a moment and closes his eyes.

"Love," Eames tries, sounding young and uncertain, "are you sure that's a good idea?"

"No," Arthur says, sounding a little insulted, "but when has that ever stopped me?"

"In real life, every moment. In the PASIV? Not so much," Eames allows.

Ariadne laughs, and it's in a blink that Fantasia changes.

The detail is breathtaking, exquisite. She trails her hand through the rough fronds of the Grassy Sea and feels the small creatures nose at her fingers, and across from her is the cry of the Purple Buffalo speeding across the plains, and a Tiny laughs as it wanders up to greet them.

It washes over her like a jumble of sound and brilliance and light, and she wants to laugh at it all and she wants to lie on her back in the grass and just stare at how alive this world is, and it's not Bastian doing it.

It's _Arthur_. She shares a look with Eames, who looks overwhelmed with it too.

"You've... imagination," Ariadne breathes, spinning around and taking it all in. She claps her hands, and wants to whirl around with Arthur, but he's still so reserved and stiff and Ariadne doesn't mind that, not one bit. She'd rather have Arthur back than anything.

Arthur tips her a small bow. "Hmmm. It's not like Bastian's. It's _mine_." He looks shyly across at Eames. "What do you think?"

"It's marvellous," Eames says promptly. "But I'm already starting to develop a complex."

"I never wanted you just for your imagination," Arthur says, low and quiet, while Ariadne's quietly appalled.

"I'm right here," she says, because the look they share is intimacy and love, and full of promise that Ariadne's okay with missing the fulfilment of.

"I had to be sure. Why I never said I- I had to be sure." Arthur presses on, his jaw tight, like if he doesn't say this _now_ he might never. "I had to be sure it was my heart and no one else's."

"And the verdict?" Eames aims for casual, and misses. Even Ariadne can hear how serious the question is.

"It was mostly Seb," Arthur tells him with a straight face. "I think you're terrible." The lie is terrible. The truth is too much in his eyes.

"You're terrible too, love," Eames says. Ariadne would almost buy it, but every _love_ has too much truth in it now Arthur's back.

"While we're here," Ariadne says, "I'm just going to go exploring." She nods her head in a random direction, eager to get away and leave them some private space.

"You don't have to," Arthur says, like the words have gotten stuck partway in his throat.

"I'm a Neverending Story geek," she says, using Seb's words mockingly. "When are we going to come again?" She pins a knowing look at him.

 _Never_ is unspoken but is clear regardless in the space between them.

"I'll catch you on the flipside," she says, pointing at the sky, their usual signal for real life. She doesn't know who came up with it, but it works to think of real life at the top, and as sleep takes them under each time, they go down a level, down and down. And isn't limbo the name of the last level before hell?

Eames throws her a salute _and_ a dirty wink. Ariadne rolls her eyes, turns resolutely away from them, and just starts to walk.

If she hears a few sweet nothings carried on the gentle breeze, she locks their content away in her heart, warm and fond.

The PASIV's set on default for an hour. Five minutes topside, one hour down. It's a pity death's the only way to get back quicker. It's odd that they never think to dream up painless ways of death just in case they need an early exit.

Perhaps it's the pain that reminds them: dreamsharing is dangerous.

Terribly dangerous, she thinks again, thinking of Seb and Bastian and Mal.

Lost in her thoughts, Ariadne loses track of where she is, too busy _thinking_ ; it's just as well Arthur knows how to hold the map of Fantasia in his head too or the dream would probably have started to collapses a few minutes ago. It's when she's passing the still, black Hollow Giants that Xayide in Seb's book left abandoned near the City of the Old Emperors that she can centre herself again.

She stands and looks at the Hollow Giants and their stylised faces. They're half sunken into the ground at distended angles, worn by weather and age. Ariadne feels sad again at the memory of Bastian. How long he must have been trapped, wandering his dreams for ever and ever. He lived more than a life in the PASIV. His death is sad, but not painful.

Ariadne knows where she is now. She memorised the whole landscape. If she goes a little more to the South, she should come across a wooden sign in the shape of a hand, a sign pointing to the House of Change.

It's as good a destination as any, even though worry hits Ariadne as she ambles towards it - she recalls something vaguely from the book, that travellers avoided the Hollow Giants because of the curse on their land.

It's just a book, though. Beautiful, but nowhere near as amazing as what the PASIV is capable of. In a book, Ariadne's imagination has to do most of the work. In the PASIV, her imagination combines with all of the dreamers into a symphony. She trails her hand over the wooden hand-shaped sign, and follows its pointed finger to the House of Change.

The House of Change looks just like an ordinary house. It could have been transplanted from any suburb, any state. Ariadne thinks the architecture is maybe West Coast, 1960s. It's not her favorite design period, so she's not too sure.

It's not the outside that's supposed to be special. It's the inside, that changes depending on what you wish to find. Dame Eyola's domain. Dame Eyola, who Mal pretended to be. Dame Eyola, so goes the story, is the woman who nurtured Bastian for dizzy, carefree months, leaving him wanting for nothing.

Mal will have spent those months, creating Seb, creating a story to lure him back into the real world.

Ariadne walks up closer to the house, smiling at it. It looks like a family kind of house. She imagines she can almost hear the laughter of kids coming from inside it.

She can. It's not her imagination. Ariadne hurries closer to the windows. Fantasia may be full now of all its creatures, so she has no idea who it might be.

She's curious, delightfully curious, and she feels like she's almost _swollen_ with it; so of course when she _does_ see who's behind the window, it feels like she bursts wide open.

Ariadne halts and stares, and stares some more.

It's Bastian and Seb.

They're just sitting at a table, laughing and joking together over something. It looks like Seb's writing something, and Bastian's checking it over, making suggestions. Ariadne stares and stares, her heart in her mouth. She suppresses the cry she wants to make and stumbles back.

It's ridiculous. They can't be _real_. She has to get away. She has to warn Arthur that he's in danger. Or maybe she's overreacting and they're just ghosts, or-

She's been trying to escape quietly, but walking backwards is no easy trick, and she crashes into something that makes a sound - an old metal bucket and an abandoned, rusty trowel, like someone's been gardening. Cobb told her once about random items that turned up in the dreamscape. They're remnants of memories that the dreamers don't remember.

Ariadne looks up in fear to see if someone's noticed her racket. To her relief, Seb and Bastian haven't moved from the table.

To her muted shock, the front door flies open and it's Mal standing there.

She swallows. The House of Changes _is_ Dame Eyola's house. It's not a real surprise, is it? But it is. Ariadne looks at Mal, eyes wide.

Mal just smiles at her, steps out of the house, and closes the door behind her.

"You're not real," Ariadne blurts out, louder than she meant to. The location picks up her voice, echoing it back at her like a cruel taunt.

"Who's to say what's real and what's not?" Mal asks her, tilting her head slowly, unnaturally. She isn't blinking. "You remember Seb and Bastian both, don't you?"

"Of course," Ariadne starts, and then pauses. "What does that mean?"

"It means people we love can live on in our memories," Mal says, stepping closer. Still not blinking. "In a way, you remember me also. When you walk the paths of your daily life, sometimes I live in your head as a memory, do I not?"

"I... suppose," Ariadne says, freaking out. It's weird enough that Mal is _there_ , let alone that they seem to be having some sort of philosophical debate.

Maybe this Mal's a projection, not a creation of Arthur's new imagination. That makes more sense. She's part of Arthur's subconscious. Probably his guilt. Or maybe she's a projection of _Ariadne's_ guilt.

Heaven knows she's been accumulating enough of _that_ for a lifetime.

"In some way," Mal says, moving smoothly towards Ariadne, like she's almost gliding over the uneven grass, "memories are more real. We trust and distrust them in equal measure as we trust and distrust other humans in equal measure." Mal's close then, really close, so close that Ariadne can see her eyes, the two colors layering her iris, and she can feel Mal's breath on her cheek. Eames is right; they're very knowing eyes...

"Memories can be as real as flesh and bone," Mal whispers, moving in so her mouth is directly next to Ariadne's ear. "And now Seb and Bastian can live in your head too."

She pulls back and smiles at Ariadne, wider, wider. Ariadne stares at her, feeling lost.

Mal pulls back just far enough that Mal's face fills her vision. The soft wind around them drops suddenly. Arthur's dropped thinking of Fantasia in its entirety because the dream is nearly over.

Behind Mal, Seb and Bastian stare at Ariadne through the window.

Ariadne looks back at Mal. She's still smiling.

"Time to go," Mal says, sing-song smooth, and Ariadne wakes up.

* * *

Secrets aren't the only thing Dominic Cobb will attempt to extract.

Sometimes he'll try and extract other things. Just ask Arthur and Amelia sometime. Walking, living proof of Dom's blitzes of madness.

Ask James and Phillipa sometime in the future. They might have a different opinion of daddy's dreaming.

Sometimes Cobb will dream big and try the impossible.

It's always a gamble. Ask Eames sometime - he's the gambling expert. You win big or you lose big when you gamble big, and usually it's none too much of the former.

Sometimes Cobb wins big, like inception, and saving Amelia.

Sometimes Cobb loses big, like nearly losing Arthur. Like Mal.

It takes knowing how to see the big picture to gamble big in the extraction business, and Cobb's very good at seeing the big picture.

But sometimes when it's a big win, when you have to concentrate solely on the big picture to win something back like a love or a life on the brink, you can be so busy celebrating and focusing on the big details that you miss the little things.

Like how Ariadne walks out of the warehouse.

Toe-to-heel.

Like a dancer.  
  
  


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